T • °, o 








> ^ 



V . i ' . 










& .* 




, v 






^* 



**** 






*bV 



» *. 












*° »!j 



J ^S 



<^ /£fi^. ^ ^ -Vc 



& **'Aj* 



**V 
















V*CT 






<2* A> 










■s> 



o 



^ ^ 



,0,-. 






OUR GREATEST BATTLE 



BOOKS BY 

FREDERICK PALMER 

THE VAGABOND 

WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA 

THE LAST SHOT 

MY YEAR OF THE GREAT WAR 

MY SECOND YEAR OF THE WAR 

WITH OUR FACES IN THE LIGHT 

AMERICA IN FRANCE 

OUR GREATEST BATTLE 



OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

(THE MEUSE-ARGONNE) 



BY 

FREDERICK PALMER 

Author of "The Last Shot," "America in France," etc. 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1919 



Copyright, 1919 
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



©CI.A535987 



TO THE READER 

During the war we had books which were the 
product of the spirit of the hour and its limitations. 
Among these was my " America in France," which 
was written, while we were still expecting the war to 
last through the summer of 19 19, to describe the 
gathering and training of the American Expedition- 
ary Forces, and their actions through the Chateau- 
Thierry and Saint-Mihiel operations. Since the war 
and the passing of the military censorship, we have 
had many hastily compiled histories, and many 
" inside " accounts from participants, including com- 
manders, both Allied and enemy, whose special 
pleading is, to one familiar with events, no less evi- 
dent in their lapses than in their tone. 

This book, which continues and supplements 
" America in France," is not in the class of the jerry- 
built histories or the personal narratives. It aims, 
as the result of special facilities for information and 
observation, to give a comprehensive and intelligent 
account of the greatest battle in.. which Americans 
ever fought, the Meuse-Argonne." ' 

In the formative period of our army, I was the 
officer in charge of press relations, under a senior 

v 



vi TO THE READER 

officer. I was never chief censor of the A. E. F. : I 
had nothing to do with the censorship of the soldiers' 
mail. After we began operations in the field, my 
long experience in war was utilized in making me an 
observer, who had the freedom of our lines and of 
those of our Allies in France. Where the average 
man in the army was limited in his observations to 
his own unit, I had the key to the different compart- 
ments. I saw all our divisions in action and all the 
processes of combat and organization. It was grati- 
fying that my suggestions sometimes led to a broader 
point of view in keeping with the character of the 
immense new army which was being filled into the 
mold of the old. 

Friends who have read the manuscript complain 
that I do not give enough of my own experiences, 
or enough reminiscences of eminent personalities; 
but even in the few places where I have allowed the 
personal note to appear it has seemed, as it would to 
anyone who had been in my place, a petty intrusion 
upon the mighty whole of two million American sol- 
diers, who were to me the most interesting personal- 
ities I met. The little that one pair of eyes could 
see may supply an atmosphere of living actuality not 
to be easily reproduced from bare records by future 
historians, who will have at their service the increas- 
ing accumulation of data. 

In the light of my observations during the battle, 



TO THE READER vii 

I went over the fields after the armistice, and studied 
the official reports, and talked with the men of our 
army divisions. For reasons that are now obvious, 
the results do not read like the communiques and 
dispatches of the time, which gave our public their 
idea of an action which could not be adequately de- 
scribed until it was finished and the war was over. 
We had repulses, when heroism could not persist 
against annihilation by cross-fire ; our men attacked 
again and again before positions were won; some- 
times they fought harder to gain a little knoll or 
patch of woods than to gain a mile's depth on other 
occasions. Accomplishment must be judged by the 
character of the ground and of the resistance. 

As the division was our fighting unit, I have de- 
scribed the part that each division took in the battle. 
The reader who wearies of details may skip cer- 
tain chapters, and find in others that he is following 
the battle as a whole in its conception and plan and 
execution, and in the human influences which were 
supreme; but the very piling up of the records of 
skill, pluck, and industry of division after division 
from all parts of the country, as they took their turn 
in the ordeal until they were expended, is accumu- 
lative evidence of what we wrought. 

The soldier who knew only his division, his regi- 
ment, battalion, company, and platoon, as he lay in 
chill rain in fox-holes, without a blanket, under gas, 



viii TO THE READER 

shells, and machine-gun fire, or charged across the 
open or up slippery ascents for a few hundred yards 
more of gains, may learn, as accurately as my in- 
formation warrants, in a freshened sense of com- 
radeship, how and where other divisions fought. He 
may think that his division has not received a fair 
share of attention for its exploits. I agree with him 
that it has not, in my realization of the limitations of 
space and of capacity to be worthy of my subject. 

There are many disputes between divisions as the 
result of a proud and natural rivalry, which was pos- 
sibly too energetically promoted by the staff in order 
to force each to its utmost before it staggered in its 
tracks from wounds and exhaustion. One division 
might have done the pioneer hammering and thrust- 
ing which gave a succeeding division its opportunity. 
A daring patrol of one division may have entered a 
position and been ordered to fall back; troops of 
another division may have taken the same position 
later. There was nothing so irritating as having to 
withdraw from hard-won ground because an adjoin- 
ing unit could not keep up with the advance. Towns 
and villages were the landmarks on the map, with 
which communiques and dispatches conjured; but 
often the success which made a village on low ground 
tenable was due to the taking of commanding hills 
in the neighborhood. Sometimes troops, in their 
eagerness to overcome the fire on their front, found 



TO THE READER ix 

themselves in the sector of an adjoining division, and 
mixed units swept over a position at the same time. 
In cases of controversy I have tried to adjust by 
investigation and by comparing reports. I must 
have made errors, whose correction I welcome. To 
illustrate the full detail of each division's advance 
would require several maps as large as a soldier's 
blanket. The maps which I have used are intended 
to indicate in a general way the movement of each, 
division, and our part on the western front in rela- 
tion to our Allies. 

There may be surprise that I have not mentioned 
the names of individuals below the rank of division 
commander, and that I have not identified units 
lower than divisions. The easy and accepted method 
would have been to single out this and that man who 
had won the Medal of Honor or the Cross, and this 
or that battalion or company which had a theatric 
part. Indeed, the author could have made his own 
choices in distinction. I knew the battle too well; I 
had too deep a respect for my privilege to set my- 
self up in judgment, or even to trust to the judgment 
of others. Not all the heroes won the Medal or 
the Cross. The winners had opportunities; their 
deeds were officially observed. How many men de- 
served them in annihilated charges in thickets and 
ravines, but did not receive them, we shall not know 
until our graves in France yield their secrets. 



x TO THE READER 

I like to think that our men did not fight for 
Crosses; that they fought for their cause and their 
manhood. A battalion which did not take a hill may 
have fought as bravely as one which did, and deserve 
no less credit for its contribution to the final result. 
So I have resisted the temptation to make a gallery 
of fame, and set in its niches those favored in the 
hazard of action, when it was the heroism and forti- 
tude of all which cannot be too much honored. I 
have written of the " team-play " rather than the 
" stars " ; of the whole — a whole embracing all that 
legion of Americans at home or abroad who were in 
uniform during the war. If I have been discriminate 
about regulars and reserves, and frank about many 
other things, it is in no carping sense. We fought 
the war for a cause which requires the truth, now 
that the war is over. 

I regret that it is not possible for me to give 
due acknowledgment to the many officers of our 
army who, during the actual campaign and since their 
demobilization, have facilitated the gathering of my 
material. For the preparation of the book I am 
indebted to the continued assistance, both in France 
and at home, of Mr. George Bruner Parks. 

Frederick Palmer. 

September, 1919. 



CONTENTS 



I A Change of Plan . .., 

II Into Line for Attack . 

III New and Old Divisions 

IV The Order of Battle . 

V On the Meuse Side . ,. 

VI We Break Through . 

VII In the Wake of the Infantry 

VIII The First Day 

IX The Attack Slows Down . 

X By the Right Flank . 

XI By the Left . 

XII By the Center . . ; . : 

XIII Over the Hindenburg Line 

XIV Disengaging Rheims . 
XV Veterans Drive a Wedge . 

XVI Mastering the Aire Trough 

XVII Veterans Continue Driving 

XVIII The Grandpre Gap Is Ours 

XIX Another Wedge . 

XX In the Meuse Trough l ., 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XXI 


Some Changes in Command 


■ 355 


XXII 


A Call for Harbord . 


376 


XXIII 


The S. O. S. Drives a Wedge 


39i 


XXIV 


Regulars and Reserves . 


4i3 


XXV 


Leavenworth Commands . 


433 


XXVI 


Others Obey 


449 


XXVII 


American Manhood . 


472 


XXVIII 


The Mill of Battle 


485 


XXIX 


They Also Served 


5°i 


XXX 


Through the Kriemhilde t 


■ S*S 


XXXI 


A Citadel and a Bowl 


54o 


XXXII 


The Final Attack . 


57i 


XXXIII 


Victory . . ., m L 


, 589 



TABLE OF MAPS 

FACING 
PAGE 

I. — American Offensives and other Offen- 
sives in which American troops par- 
ticipated, May-November, 191 8 . . 2 

2. — Where American Divisions were in line, 
from our entry into the trenches until 
the Armistice 14 

3. — Offensives of September, 19 18. Rela- 
tion of Meuse-Argonne Battle to the 
decisive Allied offensive movement . 20 

4. — Divisions in the First Stage of the 
Meuse-Argonne Battle, September 
26th-October 1st . . . . 52 

5. — Divisions in the Second Stage of the 

Meuse-Argonne Battle, October 1 st-3 1 st 194 

6. — Lines reached by German and Allied 

Offensives, 19 18 224 

7. — In the Trough of the Aire . . . 266 

8. — The approach of the Center to the 

Whale-back 274 

9. — Divisions east of the Meuse . . . 348 
10. — The Services of Supply: Showing Ports 

and Railroad Communications . . 378 
II. — Divisions in the Third Stage of the 
Meuse-Argonne Battle, October 31st- 
November nth . . . .. . 590 



OUR GREATEST BATTLE 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 

The original scope of Saint-Mihiel — A winter of preparation for a 
spring campaign — Which is cut down to two weeks — The tide 
turning for the Allies — The advantage of a general attack — 
And especially of numbers — The tactician's opportunity — Why 
the Meuse-Argonne — The whale-back of Buzancy — Striking 
for the Lille-Metz railway — All advantage with the defense 
— The audacity of the enterprise — The handicaps — A thank- 
less task at best. 



We were in the fever of preparation for our Saint- 
Mihiel attack. Divisions summoned from the vic- 
torious fields of Chateau-Thierry, and divisions 
which had been scattered with the British and 
French armies, were gathering in our own sector in 
Lorraine. The French were to assist us with ample 
artillery and aviation in carrying out our first ambi- 
tious plan under our own command. 

After cutting the redoubtable salient, which had 
been a wedge in the Allied line for four years, we 
were to go through to Mars-la-Tour and Etain, 
threatening the fortress of Metz itself. This was 



2 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

to be the end of our 191 8 campaign. Instead of 
wasting our energy in operations in mud and snow, 
we should spend the winter months in applying the 
lessons which we had learned in our first great battle 
as an army. Officers who had been proved unfit 
would be eliminated, and officers who had been 
proved fit would be promoted. All the freshly 
arrived divisions from home camps and all the per- 
sonnel for handling the artillery, tanks, and other 
material of war which our home factories would 
then be producing in quantity, would be incorporated 
in a homogeneous organization. 

The spring would find us ready to play the part 
which had been chosen for us in the final campaign. 
On the left of the long line from Switzerland to the 
North Sea would be the British Army, striking out 
from the Channel bases; in the center the French 
Army, striking from the heart of France; and on 
the right the American Army, its munitions arriving 
in full tide to support its ceaseless blows, was to 
keep on striking toward the Rhine until a decision 
was won. 

In the early days of September, with our troops 
going into position before the threatening heights of 
the salient, and with the pressure of the effort of 
forming in time an integral army increasing with 
the suspense as the 12th, the day set for the attack, 
drew near, some important officers, at the moment 




MAP NO. 1 
AMERICAN OFFENSIVES AND OTHER OFFENSIVES IN 
WHICH AMERICAN TROOPS PARTICIPATED, MAY- 
NOVEMBER, 1918. 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 3 

when their assistance seemed invaluable, were de- 
tached from the Saint-Mihiel operations. Their 
orders let them into a portentous secret. They 
were to begin work in making ready for the Meuse- 
Argonne attack. While all the rest of the army was 
thinking of our second offensive as coming in the 
spring of 19 19, they knew that it was coming two 
weeks after the Saint-Mihiel offensive. 

This change of plan was the result of a conference 
between Marshal Foch and General Pershing which 
planned swift use of opportunity. The German 
Macedonian front was crumbling, the Turks were 
falling back before Allenby, and the Italians had 
turned the tables on the Austrians along the Piave. 
Equally, if not more to the point for us, the Anglo- 
French offensive begun on August 8th had gained 
ground with a facility that quickened the pulse-beat 
of the Allied soldiers and invited the broadening of 
the front of attack until, between Soissons and the 
North Sea, the Germans were swept off Kemmel 
and out of Armentieres and away from Arras and 
across the old Somme battlefield. 

The communiques were telling the truth about 
the Allies' light losses; at every point the initiative 
was ours. The Germans were paying a heavier 
price in rearguard action than we in the attack. 
It was a surprising reaction from the pace they had 
shown in their spring offensives. All information 



4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

that came through the secret channels from behind 
the enemy lines supported the conviction of the 
Allied soldiers at the front that German morale was 
weakening. 

Ludendorff, the master tactician, was facing a 
new problem. That once dependable German 
machine was not responding with the alacrity, the 
team-play, and the bravery which had been his de- 
pendence in all his plans. He had to consider, in 
view of the situation that was now developing, 
whether or not the Saint-Mihiel salient was worth 
holding at a sacrifice of men. He knew that we 
were to attack in force ; he knew that in an offensive 
a new army is bound to suffer from dispersion and 
from confusion in its transport arrangements. If 
he allowed us to strike into the air, he could depend 
upon the mires of the plain of the Woevre to im- 
pede us while the defenses of Metz would further 
stay our advance, with the result that his reserves, 
released from Saint-Mihiel, might safely be sent to 
resist the pressure on the Anglo-French front, either 
in holding the Hindenburg line or in the arduous 
and necessarily deliberate business of covering his 
withdrawal to a new and shorter line of defense 
based on the Meuse River. The German war 
machine, which had been tied for four years to its 
depots and other semi-permanent arrangements for 
trench warfare, could not move at short notice. 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 5 

A generalization might consider the war on the 
Western Front as two great battles and one pro- 
longed siege. For the first six weeks there had been 
the " war of movement," as the French called it, 
until the Germans, beaten back, from the Marne, had 
formed the old trench line. Throughout the four 
years of siege warfare that had ensued, the object 
of every important offensive, Allied and German, 
had been a return to the " war of movement." 
After a breach had been made in the fortifications, 
the attacking army would make the most of the 
momentum of success in rapid advances and maneu- 
vers, throw the enemy's units into confusion, and, 
through the disruption of the delicate web of com- 
munications by which he controlled their movements 
for cohesive effort, precipitate a disaster. The long 
preparations which had preceded the offensives of 
1915, 191 6, and 19 17 had always given the enemy 
ample warning of what to expect. He had met con- 
centrations for attack with concentrations for de- 
fense. The sector where the issue was joined be- 
came a settled area of violent siege operations into 
which either side poured its fresh divisions as into 
a funnel. Succeeding offensives, in realization of the 
limitations of a narrower sector, — which only left the 
advance in a V with flanks exposed, — had broad- 
ened their fronts of attack; but none had been broad 
enough to permit of vital tactical surprises after the 



6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

initial onset. The attrition of the man-power of 
the offensive force had so kept pace with that of 
the defensive that the offensive had never had suf- 
ficient reserves to force a decision when the reserves 
of the defensive were approaching exhaustion. 
Moreover, the Allies had never had sufficient pre- 
ponderance of men, ordnance, and munitions to war- 
rant undertaking the enterprise, which was the 
dream of every tactician, of several offensives at 
different points of the front at the same time or in 
steady alternation. 

Now from Soissons to the sea the French and 
British were developing a comprehensive movement 
of attacks, now here and now there, in rapid suc- 
cession. This drive was not a great impulse that 
died down as had previous Allied offensives, but a 
weaving, sweeping, methodical advance. Not only 
was German morale weakening and ours strengthen- 
ing, but attrition was now definitely in our favor. 
Ludendorff's reserves were all in sight. His cards 
were on the table; we could feel assured that we 
knew fairly well how he would play them. Our own 
hand was being reinforced by three hundred thou- 
sand men a month from the immense reserves in the 
American training camps. We could press our 
initiative without fear of being embarrassed by 
serious counter-attacks taking advantage of our 
having overextended ourselves. 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 7 

Thus far, however, the Germans were still in 
possession of their old trench system, except at a 
few points; our counter-offensive had only been re- 
covering the ground which the Germans had won 
in their spring and summer offensives. Now that 
the tide had turned against him, Ludendorff, if his 
situation were as bad as we hoped, had two alter- 
natives, and a third which was a combination of the 
two. One was to fall back to the proposed shorter 
line of the Meuse. This would give him the winter 
for fortifying his new positions. As a shorter front 
would allow him deeper concentrations for defense 
and the Allies less room for maneuvers in surprise, 
it must be their purpose to prevent his successful 
retreat by prompt, aggressive, and persistent action. 
The other alternative was to make a decisive stand 
on the old line, where for four years the Germans 
had been perfecting their fortifications. If we 
should overwhelm them when he was holding them 
rigidly, we should have the advantage of a wall 
in fragments when it did break. The third plan 
was to use the old fortifications as a line of strong 
resistance in supporting his withdrawal. Broadly, 
this was the one that he was to follow. 

Everything pointed to the time as ripe for the 
fulfilment for the Allies of the tactical dream which 
had called Ludendorff to his own ambitious cam- 
paign in the spring of 19 18. Marshal Foch would 



8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

now broaden his front of alternating attacks from 
Verdun to the North Sea, in the hope of freeing the 
Allied armies from trench shackles for a deci- 
sive campaign in the open. The American part 
in this bold undertaking was to be its boldest 
feature. 

If a soldier from Mars had come to earth at any 
time from October, 19 14, to October, 19 18, and had 
been shown on a flat map the fronts of the two 
adversaries, he would have said that the obvious 
strategic point of a single offensive would be be- 
tween the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. 
This would be a blow against the enemy's lines of 
communication: a blow equivalent to turning his 
flank. If the soldier from Mars had been shown a 
relief map, he would have changed his mind, and 
he would have perfectly understood, as a soldier, 
why all the offensives had been in the north, from 
Champagne to Flanders, where breaking through 
the main line of defenses would bring the aggressor 
to better ground for his decisive movement in the 
open. He would also have understood why the 
front from the Argonne to the Swiss border had 
been tranquil since the abortive effort of the Ger- 
mans at Verdun. 

When Ludendorff undertook his great offensive of 
March, 19 18, he did not repeat Falkenhayn's error, 
but turned to the north, where the Allies had made 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 9 

their attacks. In that Lorraine-Alsatian stalemate 
to the south, with the Vosges mountains and inter- 
locking hills from Switzerland to the forts of Metz 
as the stronghold of the Germans, and the forts of 
Verdun, Toul, Epinal, and Belfort as the strong- 
holds of the French, the odds were apparently too 
much against an offensive by either side to warrant 
serious consideration. Yet a watch was kept. Over 
the French mind was always the shadow of a pos- 
sible German offensive toward Belfort; and, when 
the sector which our young army was to hold in 
Alsace and Lorraine had been first discussed in July, 
19 17, the French excluded the defense of a portion 
of the front opposite Belfort, with the polite ex- 
planation that they preferred to hold that them- 
selves. But the Germans never did more than 
make the feint of an offensive in the south, which 
Ludendorff used in the winter of 19 18 to draw off 
French troops and guns from the north: for the 
army with the numbers and the initiative of offense 
can always force the defense to waste movements to 
meet threats of attack. This was another advan- 
tage which the Allies could now use in keeping 
Ludendorff in doubt as to where our real blows 
were to be struck. 

The heights of the Saint-Mihiel salient, which look 
directly across the plain of the Woevre to the fort- 
ress of Metz, may be said roughly to have formed 



io OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the left flank of the Lorraine-Alsatian stalemate. 
They continue onward in the hills which are crowned 
by the forts of Verdun, and then across the Meuse 
River for a distance of twenty miles through the 
bastion of the Argonne Forest, where they gradually 
break into the more rolling country of Champagne. 
The Meuse winds past Saint-Mihiel and through 
the town of Verdun, and then, in its devious course, 
swings gradually to the northwest until, at Sedan, 
it turns full westward. 

Our new offensive was to be between the Meuse 
River and the western edge of the Argonne Forest. 
East of the forest is the little river Aire, and be- 
tween its valley and the valley of the Meuse rises 
back of the German front a whale-back of heights, 
as I shall describe them for the sake of bringing a 
picture to mind, though the comparison is not abso- 
lute. The practical summit of the whale-back is to 
the eastward of the village of Buzancy. We may 
use Buzancy as a symbol: for it is only in a highly 
technical history that the detail of names, confusing 
to the general and even the professional reader, is 
warrantable. The summit of the whale-back gained* 
you are looking down an apron of rolling ground 
and small hills toward the turn of the Meuse west- 
ward past Sedan, where the German Army sur- 
rounded the French Army in the Franco-Prussian 
War. 



A CHANGE OF PLAN n 

To the northeast, readily accessible to attack, are 
the Briey iron-fields, which were invaluable to the 
Germans for war material. Along the valley of the 
Meuse after it turns westward, and along the 
Franco-Belgian frontier runs the great railroad from 
Metz to Lille, which is double-track all the way and 
in large part four-track. Incidentally this connected 
the coal fields of northern France with Germany, 
but its main service was to form the western trunk 
line of communication for the German armies in 
Belgium and northern and eastern France. It was 
linked up with the railways spreading northward 
into Belgium and southward toward Amiens and 
Paris in the arterial system which gave its life blood 
to the German occupation. If this road were cut, 
the German troops in retreat would have to 
pass through the narrow neck of the bottle at 
Liege. 

The dramatic possibilities of gaining the heights 
of Buzancy and bringing the Lille-Metz tracks under 
artillery fire had the appeal of a strategic effect of 
Napoleonic days. The German staff had been fully 
aware of the danger when, in their retreat after their 
repulse on the Marne, which the world saw only as 
the spectacle of the French Army inflicting a defeat 
on an advancing foe, it used its tactical opportunity 
for choosing, with comparative deliberation, advan- 
tageous defensive positions from the Argonne 



12 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Forest to the Meuse at the foot of the whale-back. 

For future operations it was depending upon 
more than the elaborate fortifications of that line. 
Every hundred yards from the foot of the whale- 
back to the summit was in its favor in resisting 
attack. Higher ground leads to still higher ground, 
not in a regular system of ridges but in a terrain 
where nature cunningly serves the soldier. No- 
where might the defense invite the attack into 
salients with a better confidence, or feel more cer- 
tain of the success of his counter-attacks. All roads, 
and all valleys where roads might be built, were 
under observation. Heights looked across to 
heights on either side of the two river troughs, 
heights of every shape from sharp ridges and 
rounded hills to peaked summits crowned by woods. 
Tongues of woods ran across valleys. Patches of 
woods covered ravines and gullies where machine- 
gunners would have ideal cover and command of 
ground. Reverse slopes formed walls for the pro- 
tection of the artillery. The attack must fight 
blindly; the defense could fight with eyes open. 

Had the Allies attempted an offensive in the 
Meuse-Argonne sector in the first four years of the 
war, the long and extensive preparations then re- 
garded as requisite for an ambitious effort against 
first-line fortifications would have warned the Ger- 
mans in time to make full use of their positions in 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 13 

counter-preparations. All the advantage of rail- 
roads and highways were with them in concentrating 
men and material. It might not be a long distance 
in miles from the Argonne line to the Lille-Metz 
railway or to the Briey iron-fields, but it was a long 
distance if you were to travel it with an army and 
its impedimenta against the German Army in its 
prime. When attrition was in his favor in the 
early period, the German might well have preferred 
that the Allied offensive of Champagne, or Loos, 
or the Somme, or Passchendaele, should have been 
attempted here : thus leaving open to him, after he 
had inflicted a bloody repulse in this sector, the 
better ground in the north for a telling counter- 
offensive. 

Thus an Allied effort toward Mezieres, Sedan, 
and Briey would have been madness until the pro- 
pitious moment came. Had it really come now? 
Anyone who was familiar with the history of war* 
fare on the Western Front might ask the question 
thoughtfully. Bear in mind that we had not yet 
taken Saint-Mihiel and were not yet certain of our 
success there; and that from Soissons to Switzer- 
land the old German line was intact. North of 
Soissons we had broken into it at only a few points. 
In the event that they had had to make a strategic 
withdrawal, the Germans had always followed the 
tactical system of a full recoil to strong chosen posi- 



i 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tions, where they resisted with sudden and terrific 
violence and held stubbornly and thriftily until they 
began one of their powerful counter-thrusts. 

Thus they had fallen back after their defeat on 
the Marne, from before Warsaw, and from 
Bapaume to the Hindenburg line. Again and again 
their morale had been reported breaking, and they 
had seemed in a disadvantageous position, only to 
recover their spirit as by imperial command and to 
extricate themselves in a reversal of form. The 
German Staff was still in being; the German Army 
still had reserve divisions and was back on power- 
ful trench systems with ample artillery, machine- 
guns, and ammunition. Whether Ludendorff was to 
stand on the old line or withdraw to a new line, 
either operation would be imperiled by the loss of 
those heights between the Argonne and the Meuse. 
He must say, as Petain had said at Verdun : " They 
shall not pass ! " 

In my " America in France " I have told of our 
project, formed in June, 19 17, when we had not yet 
a division of infantry in France and submarine de- 
struction was on the increase, for an army of a 
million men in France, capable of the expansion to 
two million which must come, General Pershing 
thought, before the war could be won. That far- 
sighted conception and the decision which was now 
taken are the two towering landmarks of the 





MEUSE-ARGONNE 
1.(2] 2§. 78. 

2. 32.(2] 79-W 

3. 33. 80. [51 

4. 35. 81. 
5.(3) 37 82. 
26. 42.(2] 89- 
28. 7m 9°- 

9"- 
92. 



"1(31 


2 8. *82.[2) 


*^ 


35. 88. 


•«. 


35. «89- 


*5. 


37 '90- 


7 


♦42. $Z. 


*Zb{2] 


78. J 



-V 



20 30 +0 SO 



BATTLE LINE MARCH 21. I918 ■—■• 
NUMBERS INDICATE DIVISIONS. 
NUMBER IN PARENTHESIS INDICATES 
NUMBER OF TIMES IN LINE. 
♦ STARS INDICATE DIVISIONS OPERATING IN ST-MIHIEL OFFENSIVE. 
THE S^~ DIVISION WAS NEVER ASSEMBLED AS A DIVISION. 



^ 



MAP NO. 2 

WHERE AMERICAN DIVISIONS WERE IN LINE, FROM OUR 

ENTRY INTO THE TRENCHES UNTIL THE ARMISTICE. 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 15 

troublous road of our effort in France. By July 1st, 
191 8, we had a million men in France, or nearly 
double the number of the schedule arranged between 
the French and American governments. We should 
soon have two millions. 

When the Allies called for more man-power, in 
the crisis of the German offensive of March, 19 18, 
the British had supplied the shipping that brought 
the divisions from our home training camps tumbling 
into France. They were divisions, not an army; 
and in equipment they were not even divisions. 
They had been hurried to the front to support the 
British and French as reserves, and they had been 
thrown into battle to resist the later German of- 
fensives. There had been no niggardliness in our 
attitude. We offered all our man-power as cannon- 
fodder to meet the emergency. Across the Paris 
road behind Chateau-Thierry we had given more 
than the proof of our valor. In the drive toward 
Soissons and to the Vesle we had established our 
personal mastery over the enemy. We had pressed 
him at close quarters, and kept on pressing him until 
he had to go. The confidence inherent in our nature, 
strengthened by training, had grown with the test 
of battle. We had known none of the reverses 
which lead to caution. More than ever our im- 
pulse was to attack. 

Chateau-Thierry had taught Marshal Foch that 



16 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

he could depend upon any American division as3 
" shock " troops which would charge and keep on 
charging until exhausted. Now he would use this 
quality to the utmost. To the American Army he 
assigned the part which relied upon the call of vic- 
tory to soldiers as fresh as the French on the Marne, 
and, in their homesickness for their native land, 
impatient for quick results. If a Congressional 
Committee, knowing all that General Pershing 
knew, had been told of the plan of the Meuse- 
Argonne, they would probably have said: "No 
leader shall sacrifice our men in that fashion. We 
will not stand by and see them sent to slaughter." 

The reputation of a commander was at stake. 
Should we break through promptly to the summit of 
the heights, then we might take divisions, corps, 
even armies, prisoners; but that was a dream de- 
pendent upon a deterioration in German staff work 
and in the morale of the German soldier which was 
inconceivable. The great prize was the hope of 
an early decision of the war; in expending a hun- 
dred or two hundred thousand casualties in the 
autumn and early winter, instead of a million, per- 
haps, during the coming summer. At home we 
should be saved from drafting more millions of men 
into our army; from the floating of more liberty 
loans; from harsher restrictions upon our daily life; 
from the calling of more women and children to 



A CHANGE OF PLAN 17 

hard labor; from the prolongation of the agony, the 
suspense, the horror, and the costs of the cataclysm 
of destruction. 

There were more handicaps than the heights to 
consider: those of our unreadiness. If we had 
failed, this would have meant the burden of criticism 
heavy upon the shoulders of the commander-in-chief, 
who would have been recalled. Dreams of any 
miraculous success aside, it was not the example of 
the swift results in a day at Antietam, or the brilliant 
maneuver of Jackson at Chancellorsville, but the 
wrestling, hammering, stubbornly resisting effort of 
the men of the North and South in the Appomattox 
campaign which was to call upon our heritage of 
fortitude. In that series of attacks which Marshal 
Foch was now to develop, our part as the right 
flank of the three great armies was in keeping with 
the original plan of 19 17: only we were facing the 
Meuse instead of the Rhine. Without sufficient 
material or experience, we were to keep on driving, 
not looking forward to the dry ground and fair 
weather of summer but toward the inclemency of 
winter. There against the main artery of German 
communications we were to launch a threat whose 
power was dependent upon the determined initiative 
of our men. Every German soldier killed or 
wounded was one withdrawn from the fronts of the 
British and French, or from Ludendorff's reserves 



1 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

which must protect his retreat; and every shell 
and every machine-gun bullet which was fired at us 
was one less fired at our Allies. It was to be in 
many respects a thankless battle, and for this reason 
it was the more honor to our soldiers. 



II 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 

The Meuse-Argonne and the Somme Battle of 1916 — The British 
had four months of preparation — And a trained army — But 
a resolute enemy — Our untried troops — Outguessing Luden- 
dorff — Prime importance of surprise — Blindman's buff — 'What 
it means to move armies — Fixing supply centers — Stafts arrive 
— Their inexperience — Learning on the run — Our confidence — 
Aiming for the stars — Up on time. 

Comparisons with the Battle of the Somme, the 
first great British offensive, which I observed 
through the summer of 19 16, often occurred to me 
during the Meuse-Argonne battle. In both a new 
army, in its vigor of aggressive impulse, continued 
its attack with an indomitable will, counting its gains 
by hundreds of yards, but never for a moment yield- 
ing the initiative in its tireless attrition. 

The British were four months in preparing for 
their thrust on the basis of nearly two years' train- 
ing in active warfare, with all their arrangements for 
transport and supply settled in a small area only 
an hour's steaming across the Channel from home. 
Behind their lines they built light railroads and 
highways. They had ample billeting space, and 
their great hospitals were within easy reach. They 

19 



2 o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

gathered road-repairing machinery and trained 
their labor battalions; built depots and yards; estab- 
lished immense dumps of ammunition and engineer- 
ing material; brought their heavy guns into position 
methodically, and registered them with caution over 
a long period; set an immense array of trench 
mortars in secure positions; dug deep assembly 
trenches for the troops to occupy before going 
<r over the top;" and ran their water pipes up to 
the front line, ready for extension into conquered 
territory. 

Their divisions had been seasoned by long trench 
experience, tested in the terrific fire of the Ypres 
salient and trained in elaborate trench raids for a 
great offensive. All their methods were as de- 
liberate as British thoroughness required. Units 
were carefully rehearsed in their parts, and their 
liaison worked out by staffs that had long operated 
together. Commanders of battalions, brigades, and 
divisions had been tried out, and corps commanders 
and staffs developed. 

On the other hand, the Germans knew that the 
British attack was coming. Their army was in the 
prime of its numbers and efficiency. They had im- 
mence forces of reserves to draw upon to meet an 
offensive which was centered in one sector, with no 
danger of having to meet offensives in another 
sector. We were striking in one of several of- 




ARROWS SHOW OTHER SEPTEMBER OFFENSIVES. 
ACCOMPANYING THE MEUSE -ARSONNE OFFENSIVE . 
WHICH STRUCK FOR THE GERMAN LINE OF COMMUNICATIONS- 
SHADED AREA IS SRIEY IRONFIELD. 



SCALE OF 



^ 



V 

I 

i 

L. 
^> 
o I 

BELFORT 
L. 



MAP XO. 6 
OFFENSIVES OF SEPTEMBER, 1918. RELATION OF MEUSE- 
ARGONNE BATTLE TO THE DECISIVE ALLIED OFFENSIVE 
MOVEMENT. 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 21 

fensives, each having for its object rapidity and 
suddenness of execution, over about the same 
breadth of front as the British in 19 16; and against 
the Germans, not in their prime, as I have said, 
but when they had lost the initiative and were 
deteriorating. 

The increase of the skill of infantry in the at- 
tack, in their nicely calculated and acrobatic coordi- 
nation with protecting curtains of accurate artillery 
fire, had been the supreme factor in the progress of 
tactics. As a young army we had all these lessons 
to learn and to apply to our own special problems. 
As we could not use the divisions that were at Saint- 
Mihiel in the initial onset in the Meuse-Argonne, 
we had to depend upon others from training camps 
and upon those which were just being relieved from 
the Chateau-Thierry area. Two of them had never 
been under fire ; several had had only trench experi- 
ence. They had not fought or trained together as 
an army. Many of our commanders had not been 
tried out. Some of the divisions were as yet with- 
out their artillery brigades; others had never served 
with their artillery brigades in action. By the morn- 
ing of September 25th, or thirteen days after the 
Saint-Mihiel attack, all the infantry, the guns, the 
aviation, and the tanks must be in position to throw 
their weight, in disciplined solidarity, against 
a line of fortifications which had all the strength 



22 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

that ant-like industry could build on chosen posi- 
tions. 

We had neither material nor time for extensive 
preparations. We must depend upon the shock of 
a sudden and terrific impact and the momentum of 
irresistible dash. If we took the enemy by surprise 
when he was holding the line weakly with few re- 
serves, we might go far. Indeed, never was the 
element of surprise more essential. We were coun- 
tering Ludendorff's anticipation that, if he withdrew 
from the salient, we should stall our forces ineffec- 
tually in the mud before Metz : countering it with 
the anticipation that he would never consider that a 
new army, though it grasped his intention, would 
within two weeks' time dare another offensive 
against the heights of the whale-back. 

For our dense concentrations we had only two 
first-class roads leading up to the twenty-mile front 
between the Meuse and the Forest's edge. These 
were ill placed for our purpose. We might form 
our ammunition dumps in the woods, but nothing 
could have been more fatal than to have built a 
road, for to an aviator nothing is so visible as the 
line of a new road. Where aviators were flying at a 
height of twelve thousand feet in the Battle of the 
Somme, they were now flying with a splendid 
audacity as low as a thousand feet, which enabled 
them to locate new building, piles of material, even 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 23 

well-camouflaged gun positions; and the minute 
changes in a photograph taken today in comparison 
with one of yesterday were sufficient evidence to a 
staff expert that some movement was in progress. 
An unusual amount of motor-truck traffic or even an 
unusual number of automobiles, not to mention the 
marching of an unusual number of troops along a 
road by day, was immediately detected. 

All our hundreds of thousands of men, all the 
artillery, all the transport must move forward at 
night. To show lights was to sprinkle tell-tale stars 
in the carpet of darkness as another indication that 
a sector which had known routine quiet for month 
on month was awakening with new life that could 
mean only one thing to a military observer. With. 
the first suspicion of an offensive the enemy's troops 
in the trenches would be put on guard, reserves 
might be brought up, machine-guns installed, more 
aviators summoned, trench raids undertaken, and all 
the means of information quickened in search for 
enlightening details. 

It was possible that the German might have 
learned our plan at its inception from secret agents 
within our own lines. If he had, it would not have 
been the first time that this had happened. In turn, 
his preparations for defense might be kept secret in 
order to make his reception hotter and more crafty. 
He might let the headlong initiative of our troops 



24 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

carry us into a salient at certain points before he 
exerted his pressure disastrously for us on our 
flanks. Thus he had met the French offensive of 
the spring of 19 17; thus he had concentrated his 
murder from Gommecourt to La Boisselle in the 
Somme Battle. 

Not only had our army to " take over " from the 
French in all the details of a sector, from transport 
and headquarters to front line, but the Fourth 
French Army, on our left, which was to attack at 
the same hour, must be reinforced with troops and 
guns. The decision that the Saint-Mihiel offensive 
was not to follow through to Etain and Mars-la- 
Tour meant that French as well as American units 
and material must move from that sector to the 
Argonne. Immediately it had covered the charge 
of our troops the heavy artillery, both French and 
American, was to be started on its way, and, after 
it, other artillery and auxiliary troops and transport 
of all kinds as they could be spared. 

" It sounds a bromide to say that you cannot 
begin attacking until your army is at the front," 
said a young reserve officer, " but I never knew what 
it meant before to get an army to the front." 

He had studied his march tables at the Staff 
School at Langres; now ;he was applying them. 
Young reserve officers had a taste of the difficulties 
of troop movements. They had to locate units, see 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 25 

that they received their orders, and set them on their 
way according to schedule, with strict injunctions 
from " on high " to see that everybody was up on 
time. They had lessons in the speed of units and 
the capacity of roads which, at the sight of a column 
of soldiers on the march, will always rise in their 
recollections of anxious days. 

When haste is vital, unexpected contingencies due 
to the uneven character of men and materials break 
into any system. That is the " trouble " with war, 
as one of these young officers said. Everything de- 
pends upon system, and system is impossible when 
the very nature of war develops unexpected demands 
that are prejudicial to any dependable processes of 
routine. With urgent calls for locomotives and 
rolling stock coming from every quarter to meet the 
demands of the extension of the Allied offensive 
campaign over an unexampled breadth of front, the 
railroads, which were few in this region, could not 
transport troops and artillery which ordinarily 
would have gone by train. 

Three road routes were available from the Saint- 
Mihiel to the Argonne region. Artillery tractors 
that could go only three were in columns with 
vehicles that could go ten and fifteen miles an hour. 
Field artillery regiments, coming out from the Saint- 
Mihiel sector after two weeks of ceaseless travail, 
were delayed by having their horses killed by shell- 



26 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

fire. The exhaustion of horses from overwork was 
becoming increasingly pitiful. They could not have 
the proper rest and care. In some instances they 
made in a night only half the distance which 
schedules required. When the deep mud, and out- 
bursts of bombardment from the enemy, retarded the 
relief of troops, motor buses, which were waiting 
for them, had to be dispatched on other errands, 
leaving weary legs to march instead of ride. Mili- 
tary police, army and corps auxiliaries of all kinds, 
and various headquarters must be transferred. 

Officers who had hoped for a little sleep once 
the Saint-Mihiel offensive was under way received 
" travel orders," with instructions to reach the 
Argonne area by hopping a motor-truck or in any 
way they could. Soldiers, after marching all night, 
might seek sleep in the villages if there were room 
in houses, barns, or haylofts. Blocks of traffic were 
frequent when some big gun or truck slewed into a 
slough in the darkness. 

The processions on these three roads from Saint- 
Mihiel represented only one of many movements 
from all directions to the Argonne sector. French 
units had to pass by our new front to that of the 
Fourth Army. A French officer at Bar-le-Duc, who 
had charge of routing all the traffic, was an old hand 
at this business of moving armies. He perfectly 
appreciated that curses were speeding toward his 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 27 

office from all four points of the compass where 
traffic was stalled or columns waited an interminably- 
long time at cross-roads for their turn to move, or 
guns or tanks or anything else in all the varied as- 
sortment were not arriving on schedule time. By 
telephone he kept in touch with American and 
French units in the process of the mobilization, while 
he moved his chessmen on the rigid lines of his 
map. 

The " sacred road " from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun 
coursed again with the full tide of urgent demands; 
only this time the traffic turned off on the roads to 
the left instead of going on to the town. With each 
passing day, as the concentration increased, daylight 
became a more portentous foe. "No lights! No 
lights!" was the watchword of all thought which 
the military police spoke in no uncertain tones to 
any chauffeur who thought that one flash of his 
lamps would do no harm; some of the language 
used was brimstone and figuratively illuminating 
enough to have made an aurora borealis. Camou- 
flage became an obsession of everyone who had any 
responsibility. Discomfort, loss of temper and of 
time were the handicaps in this blindman's buff of 
trying to keep the landscape looking as natural by 
day as it had in the previous months of tranquil 
trench warfare. 

Traffic management was only one and not the 



28 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

most trying or important part of the problem. If 
the demands upon the Services of Supply were not 
met, failure was certain : our army would be hungry 
and without ammunition. In no department was the 
additional burden of the Meuse-Argonne more 
keenly felt than in this. New railheads must be 
established, and additional vehicular transport sent 
forward to connect up with the new front. Though 
the mastering of the objective in the Saint-Mihiel 
operation released a certain surplus, it was dis- 
turbingly small. The line established after the 
salient was cut had become violent. It would re- 
quire large quantities of supplies as long as we 
should hold it; and it was already evident that the 
Meuse-Argonne offensive was to be a greedy monster 
which could never have its hunger satisfied. 

Every hour that we kept the enemy ignorant of 
the strength of our concentration was an hour 
gained. The one thing that he must not know was 
the number of divisions which we were marshaling 
for our effort. They were the sure criterion of the 
formidability of our intentions. The most delicate 
task of all was the taking over of the front line from 
the French. Not until the stage was set with the 
accessories of the heavy artillery, the new depots, 
and ammunition dumps did the roads near the front, 
cleared for their progress, throb under the blanket 
of night with the scraping rhythm of the doughboys' 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 29 

marching steps, infusing in the preparations the life 
of a myriad human pulse-beats in unison. Our faith 
was in them, in the days before the battle and all 
through the battle to the end. Their faces so many 
moving white points in the darkness, each figure 
under its heavy equipment seemed alike in shadowy 
silhouette. In the mystery of night their disci- 
plined power, suggestive of the tiger creeping 
stealthily forward for the spring on his prey, was 
even more significant than by day. 

The men were prepared in the red blood that 
coursed young arteries, in their litheness and their 
pride and will to " go to it." They had their rifles, 
their belts full of ammunition, their gas masks, and 
their rations. It was not for them to ask any ques- 
tions — not even if the barrages which would cover 
their charges would be accurate, if the tanks would 
kill machine-gun nests, if the barbed wire would be 
cut, and if their generals would make mistakes. Sus- 
pense, not of the mind but of the heart, lightened at 
the sight of their movement, so automatic and yet so 
stirringly human. The gigantic preparations of 
dumps, gun positions, and trains of powerful trac- 
tors became only a demonstration of the mighty 
energy of our industrial age beside that subtler en- 
deavor which had formed them for their task and 
set them down as the pawns of a staff in a gamble 
with death. Might the big guns that the troops 



30 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

passed, grim hard shadows in ravines and woods, 
do their work well in order that the empty ambu- 
lances at rest in long lines might have little 
to do! 

By battalions and companies the marching 
columns separated, taking by-roads and paths, as 
their officers studied their maps and received instruc- 
tions from French guides who knew the ground. 
By daylight they were dissipated into the landscape. 
The hornets were in their hives; they would swarm 
as dawn broke to the thunders of the artillery. At- 
tacks were always at dawn; and dawn had taken on 
a new meaning to us since the morning of July 18th, 
when our 1st and 2nd Divisions, in the company of 
crack French divisions, had started the first of the 
counter-offensives. 

The success of Saint-Mihiel had developed corps 
staffs which must now direct the Meuse-Argonne, 
while others took over the arrangements at Saint- 
Mihiel. Major-General Hunter Liggett, pioneer of 
corps commanders, with the First Corps was to be on 
the left; Major-General George H. Cameron, with 
the Fifth Corps in the center; and Major-General 
Robert L. Bullard, with the Third Corps on the 
right. Groups of officers making a pilgrimage in 
automobiles to the new sector were to be the 
" brains " of the coming attack; for our corps com- 
mand was an administrative unit which took over the 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 31 

direction of a different set of divisions from those 
under it at Saint-Mihiel. 

The corps staffs had only four or five days for 
their staff preparations for the battle. It was Army 
Headquarters in the town hall of Souilly which set 
the army objective, the corps limits, and the tactical 
direction of the attack as a whole, while the corps 
set the divisional limits and objectives to accord 
with the army objective. At our call we had French 
experience of the sector, and in this war of maps 
we had maps. Our prevision in this respect was 
excellent. The French furnished us with millions of 
maps in the course of the war; we had our own map- 
printing presses at Langres; and we had movable 
presses in the field for printing maps which gave the 
results of the latest observations of the enemy's de- 
fenses. A snowstorm of maps descended upon our 
army, and still the cry was for more. Not only 
battalion and company, but platoon and even squad 
commanders needed these large-scale backgrounds 
marked with their parts. 

Yet maps have their limitations. They may show 
the ground in much detail, but, even when the blue 
diagrams and symbols are supposed up to date, not 
the bushes where the enemy's machine-gun nests are 
hidden, or what the enemy has done overnight in 
the way of defenses. Nor are maps plummets into 
human psychology. Even when they have located 



32 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

machine-gun nests they cannot say whether the gun- 
ners who man them will yield easily or will fight to 
the death. If the British on the Somme, after 
months of preparation and study of the defenses of 
the sector, had more elaborate directions for their 
units than we, it does not mean that, considering its 
inexperience, our staff did not accomplish wonders. 

Our corps commanders may have known their 
division commanders in time of peace, but they had 
never been their superiors in action of any kind. 
Their artillery groupings and aviation arrangements 
included French units as well as their own. There 
was no time for considering niceties in dispositions. 
Division commanders who had to arrange the details 
of their cooperation had never served together. 
They had scores of problems, due to the haste of 
their mobilization, to consider; for the burden of 
apprehension that pressed them close was of appre- 
hension lest they should not be up on time. They 
and their officers went over the ground at the front, 
but they had not the time to make the thorough 
observation that any painstaking and energetic di- 
vision commander would have preferred. 

A division with all its artillery, machine-guns, and 
transport is a ponderous column in movement, with 
every part having its regulation place. One day in 
one set of villages and the next in another, the com- 
munication of orders and requirements down 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 33 

through all the branches is difficult, and the more 
so when you are short of dispatch riders, and there 
is a limit to what can be done over the field tele- 
phone. The unexpected demand for wires for our 
second great offensive must not find the signal corps 
unprepared; or a people as dependent on telephones 
and telegraph as we are, and so accustomed to hav- 
ing them materialize on request, would have been 
helpless in making war. The deepest tactical con- 
cern was, of, course, the coordination of the artillery 
with the infantry advance. It is only a difference of 
a hundred yards' range, as we all know, between 
putting your shells among your own men instead of 
the enemy's. 

Reliable communication from the infantry to the 
aviator and his reliable report of his observations to 
the artillery and infantry is one of the complicated 
features in that team-play, which, in the game of 
death, needs all the finesse of professional baseball, 
a secret service, and a political machine, plus the 
requisite poise, despite poor food and short hours of 
sleep, for worthily leading men in battle. Some di- 
visions that went into this action had not yet received 
their artillery; or again their artillery arrived from 
the training camp, where the guns had just been 
received, barely in time to go into position, so that 
an inexperienced artillery commander reported to 
an inexperienced division commander with whom he 



34 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had never served. There were batteries without 
horses, which the horses of other batteries pulled 
into position after they had brought up their own. 
Battery commanders received their table of bar- 
rages and their objectives of fire, and, without regis- 
tering, had to trust to observation by men untried in 
battle or by aviators who had never before observed 
in a big operation. Aviators had been trained to 
expect the infantry to put out panels, and they might 
say that the infantry did not show their panels, while 
the infantry would deny the charge. Such things 
had happened before. They would happen this 
time. They happen to the most veteran of armies, 
whose long experience, however, may have an ex- 
cellent substitute in other qualities which we had in 
plenitude, as we shall see. 

All our own guns were of French make, with the 
exception of a few howitzers. The gun-producing 
power of the French arsenals supplying us with our 
artillery and our machine-guns — the Brownings were 
only just beginning to arrive — in addition to supply- 
ing all their own forces over the long front of their 
offensive was one of the marvels of the war and an 
important factor in victory. The majority of our 
planes were also of French make : not until August 
had the Liberty motors begun to arrive. The 
French had supplied us with additional aviation and 
tanks, as well as artillery, from their own army; but 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 35 

much of this was new. All the Allies, indeed, were 
robbing their training camps for the supreme effort 
that was about to be made from the Meuse to the 
Channel. 

While the public, which thinks of aviation in terms 
of combat, admired the exploits of the aces in bring- 
ing down enemy planes, which they looked for in 
the communiques, the army was thinking of the 
value of the work of the observers, whose heroism 
in running the gamut of fire from air and earth in 
order to bring back information might change the 
fate of battles. Training for combat, perhaps, more 
nearly approximated service conditions than training 
for observation. A fighting aviator, with natural 
born courage, audacity, and coolness, who goes out 
determinedly to bring down his man, makes the ace. 
These qualities were never lacking in our fliers. 
They went after their men and got them, in a 
record of successes which was not the least of the 
honors which our army won in France. The ob- 
server had no public praise ; he was always the butt 
of the complaint that he did not bring enough in- 
formation, or that he brought inaccurate informa- 
tion. His complex responsibilities were singularly 
dependent upon that experience which comes only 
from practice. 

Instead of applying the lessons of Saint-Mihiel at 
leisure, as we had hoped, to the whole army, we had 



36 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

to apply them on the run in the rapid concentration 
of divisions which had not been at Saint-Mi hi el. 
Yet the supreme thing was not schooling. It was a 
seemingly superhuman task in speed. It was to have 
the infantry up on time even if the other units 
were limping. In this we succeeded. On the night 
of September 24th, from the Meuse to the Forest's 
western edge every division was in position. We 
had kept faith with Marshal Foch's orders. We 
were ready to go " over the top." 

The Marshal postponed the attack for another 
day. Rumor gave the reason that the French 
Fourth Army was not ready; possibly the real 
reason, or at least a contributory reason, was in 
the canniness of such an old hand at offensives as 
Marshal Foch. Ours was a new army under enor- 
mous pressure. Veteran armies were always asking, 
at the last moment, for more time in which to com- 
plete their preparations before attacking. Possibly 
the Marshal had set the 25th as the date with a 
view to forcing our effort under spur of the calendar, 
while he looked forward to granting the inevitable 
request for delay. At all events the respite was 
most welcome. Our staff had time for further con- 
ferences and attention to their arrangements for sup- 
plies, and our combat troops a breathing spell which 
gave their officers another day in which to study the 
positions they were to storm. 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 37 

When I considered all the digging necessary for 
making the gun positions, or had even a cursory 
view of the parks of divisional transport, of the 
reserves crowded in villages and woods, of the am- 
munition trains, and of the busy corps and division 
headquarters, I wondered if it were possible that the 
Germans could not have been apprised that a con- 
centration was in progress. Not only did pocket 
lamps flash like fireflies from the hands of those who 
used them thoughtlessly, but despite precautions 
careless drivers turned on motor lights, and some 
rolling kitchen was bound to let out a flare of sparks, 
while the locomotives running in and out at railheads 
showed streams of flames from their stacks, and here 
and there fires were unwittingly started. An aviator 
riding the night, as he surveyed the shadowy land- 
scape, could not miss these manifestations of activity. 
If he shut off his engine he might hear above the low 
thunder of transport the roar of the tanks advancing 
into position, of the heavy caterpillar tractors draw- 
ing big guns. When the air was clear and the wind 
favorable, the increasing volume of sound directed 
toward the front must have been borne to sharp ears 
on the other side of No Man's Land. All this I 
may mention again, without reference to observa- 
tions by spies within our lines. 

On our side, we might try to learn if the enemy 
knew of our coming, and how much he knew. A 



38 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

thin fringe of French had remained in the front; 
line trenches, with our men in place behind them. 
Thus our voices of different timbre, speaking the 
English tongue in regions where only French had 
been spoken, might not be heard if we forgot the 
rules of silence, which were as mandatory by 
custom as in a church or a library; and besides, if 
the Germans made a raid for information they 
would not take American prisoners. They did make 
some minor raids, capturing Frenchmen who, per- 
haps unwittingly when wounded or in the reaction 
from danger, and subject to an intelligence system 
skilled in humoring and indirect catechism, told more 
than they thought they were telling. Information 
that we had from German prisoners left no doubt 
that the Germans knew at least that the Americans 
were moving into the sector, but did not expect a 
powerful offensive. This, as we had anticipated, 
was discounted as being out of the question on the 
heels of the Saint-Mihiel offensive. Our new army, 
the Germans thought, had not the skill or the 
material for such a concentration, even if we had 
the troops. 

In our demonstration that we did have the skill 
and the energy, and that in one way and another we 
were able to secure the material even though it 
were inadequate, we were peculiarly American; and 
we were most significantly American in the adaptable 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 39 

exercise of the reserve nervous force of our restless, 
dynamic natures, which makes us wonderful in a 
race against time. We strengthen our optimism 
with the pessimism which spurs our ambition to ac- 
complishment by its self-criticism that is never 
satisfied. 

On all hands I heard complaints by officers con- 
cerning lack of equipment, of personnel, of training, 
and of time. But no one could spare the breath 
for more than objurgations, uttered in exclamatory 
emphasis, which eased the mind. I could make a 
chapter out of these railings. Yet if I implied that 
the unit, whether salvage or aviation, hospital or 
front-line battalion, tanks or signal corps, or any 
other, would not be able to carry out its part, I was 
assailed with a burst of outraged and flaming opti- 
mism. And optimism is the very basis of the psy- 
chologic formula of war. Americans have it by 
nature. We lean forward on our oars. Optimism 
comes to us from the conquest of a continent. 
It presides at the birth of every infant, who may one 
day be president of the United States. 

Confidence was rock-ribbed in a commander-in- 
chief's square jaw; it rang out in voices over the 
telephone; it was in the very pulse-beats of the wait- 
ing infantry; it shone in every face, however weary. 
We had won at Chateau-Thierry; we had won at 
Saint-Mihiel; we should win again. The infantry 



4 o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

might not conceive the nature of the defenses or of 
the fire they might have to encounter. So much the 
better. They would have the more vim in " driving 
through," said the staff. 

The objectives which we had set ourselves on that 
first day, after the conquest of the first-line fortifi- 
cations, which we took for granted, were a tribute 
to our faith in Marshal Foch's own optimism. On 
the first day we were striking for the planets. In 
our second and third days' objectives we did not 
hesitate to strike for the stars. This plan would 
give us the more momentum, and if we were to be 
stopped it would carry us the farther before we 
were. Of course we did not admit that we might 
be stopped. If we were not, the German military 
machine would be broken; and any doubts on the 
part of generals were locked fast in their inner con- 
sciousness, for uttered word of scepticism was 
treason. 

On the night of the 25th, when all the guns began 
the preliminary bombardment, stretching an aurora 
from the hills of Verdun into Champagne, our secret 
was out. From the whirlwind of shells into his posi- 
tions the enemy knew that we were coming at dawn. 
With thousands of flashes saluting the heavens it no 
longer mattered if a rolling kitchen sent up a 
shower of sparks or an officer inadvertently turned 
the gleam of his pocket flash skyward. Along the 



INTO LINE FOR ATTACK 41 

front our infantry slipped forward into the place of 
the French veterans, who came marching back down 
the roads. 

" Gentlemen," said the French, " the sector is 
yours. A pleasant morning to you ! " 



Ill 



NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS 



A military machine impossible in human nature — Regular tradi- 
tions — National Guard sentiment — National Army solidarity — 
Divisonal pride — Our first six divisions unavailable to start in 
the Meuse-Argonne — British-trained divisions — What veteran 
divisions would have known. 

The Leavenworth plan was to harmonize regulars, 
National Guard, and National Army into a force so 
homogeneous that flesh and blood became machin- 
ery, with every soldier, squad, platoon, brigade, and 
division as much like all the others as peas in a 
pod; but human elements older than the Leaven- 
worth School, which had given soldiers cheer on 
the march and fire in battle from the days of the 
spear to the days of the quick-firer, hampered the 
practical application of the cold professional idea 
worked out in conscientious logic in the academic 
cloister. It may be whispered confidentially that all 
unconsciously their own training and associations 
sometimes made the inbred and most natural affec- 
tion of the Leavenworth graduates for the regulars 
subversive of the very principle which they had set 
out to practise with such resolutely expressed im- 
partiality. A regular felt that he was a little more 

42 



NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS 43 

of a regular if he were serving with a regular 
division. 

" We're not having any of this good-as-you-are 
nonsense in this regiment," said its Colonel, talking 
to a fellow-classman who was on the staff. " We're 
filled up with reserve officers and rookies, — but 
we're regulars nevertheless. We've started right 
with the regular idea — the way we did in the old 
— th " — in which the officers had served together as 
lieutenants. 

By the same token of sentiment and association 
the National Guardsmen remained National Guards- 
men. They also had a tradition. If they were not 
proud of it they would be unnatural fighters. While 
the average citizen had taken no interest in pre- 
paredness, except in the abstraction that national de- 
fense was an excellent thing, they had drilled on 
armory floors and attended annual encampments. 
Sometimes the average citizen had spoken of them 
as " tin soldiers " ; and they were conscious perhaps 
of a certain superciliousness toward them on the part 
of regular officers. Drawn from the same communi- 
ties, members of the same military club that met at 
the armory, they already had their pride of regiment 
and of company: a feeling held in common with 
Guardsmen from other parts of the country, who 
belonged to the same service from the same motives. 
Should that old Connecticut or Alabama or any 



44 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

other regiment with a Civil War record, and, per- 
haps, with a record dating from the Revolution, 
forget its old number because it was given a new 
number, or its own armory, because it went to a 
training camp? Relatives and friends, who bowed 
to the edict of military uniformity and anonymity, 
would still think of it as their home regiment. If 
Minneapolis mixed its sons with St. Paul's, they 
would still be sons of Minneapolis. 

While all volunteers felt that they were entitled 
to the credit of offering their services without wait- 
ing on the call, the draft men, who had awaited the 
call, had their own conviction about their duty, 
which, from the hour when they walked over from 
the railway stations to the camp, gave them a sense 
of comradeship : while they might argue that it was 
more honor to found than to follow a tradition. 
Their parents, sisters, and sweethearts were just as 
fond, and their friends just as proud, of them as 
they had been in the Guard. Aside from a few regu- 
lar superiors, their officers were graduates of the 
Officers' Training Camps, who, as the regulars said, 
had nothing to unlearn and were subject to no politi- 
cal associations. Yes, the draft men considered 
themselves as the national army; and they would set 
a standard which should be in keeping with this 
distinction. 

All the men assembled in any home cantonment, 



NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS 45 

with the exception of the regulars, were almost in- 
variably from the same part of the country, which 
gave them a neighborhood feeling. The doings of 
that cantonment became the intimate concern of the 
surrounding region. Its chronicles were carried in 
the local newspapers. There was a division to each 
cantonment; and in France the fighting unit was the 
division, complete in all its branches, — artillery, 
machine-guns, trench mortars, engineers, hospital, 
signal corps, transport, and other units. As a 
division it had its training area; as a division it 
traveled, went into battle, and was relieved. 

Before a division was sent to France its men were 
already thinking in terms of their division; they met 
the men of no other division unless on leave, and 
met them in France only in passing, or on the left 
or right in battle. In the cantonment the division 
had its own camp newspaper, its own sports, its 
separate life on the background of the community 
interest, without the maneuvering of many divisions 
together on the European plan until they were sent 
into action in the Saint-Mihiel or Meuse-Argonne 
offensive. Each division commander and his staff, 
who were regular officers, conspired to develop a 
divisional pride, thereby, in a sense, humanly defeat- 
ing the regular idea of making out of American citi- 
zens a machine which could be anything but humanly 
American. Within the division, pride of company, 



46 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of battalion, of regiment, was instilled, and the dif- 
ferent units developed rivalries which were amalga- 
mated in a sense of rivalry with other divisions. 

Every cantonment had the " best " division in the 
United States before it went to France, where ri- 
valry expressed itself on the battlefield. The record 
of the war is by divisions. Men might know their 
division, but not their corps commander. Divisions 
might not vary in their courage, but they must in the 
amount of their experience and in the quality of their 
leaders. A division that had been in three or four 
actions might be better than one that had been in 
ten; but a division that had not been in a single 
action hardly had the advantage over one that had 
been in several. Our four pioneer divisions, which 
had been in the trenches during the winter of 
19 1 7-1 8 and later in the Chateau-Thierry opera- 
tions, the 1st (regulars), and the 2nd (regulars and 
marines), and the 26th and the 42nd (both National 
Guard) , were all at Saint-Mihiel. Their units were 
complete; their artillery had had long practice with 
their infantry; they had had long training-ground 
experience in France, had known every kind of 
action in modern war, and had kept touch under 
fire, rather than in school instruction, with the prog- 
ress of tactics. If they were not our " best " divi- 
sions, it was their fault. 

Of the two other divisions which had been longest 



NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS 47 

after these in our army sector, the 32nd had just 
finished helping Mangin break through at Juvigny, 
northwest of Soissons, and the 3rd was at Saint- 
Mihiel. These six formed the group which General 
Pershing had in France at the time of the emergency 
of the German offensive in March, which hastened 
our program of troop transport. 

Now we were bringing to the American army 
five of the divisions which had been trained with 
the British, the 4th, 28th, 33rd, 35th, and 77th. 
From the British front the 77th had gone to Lor- 
raine, whence it was recalled to the Chateau-Thierry 
theater. The 4th and the 28th were ordered from 
the British front, after the third German offensive 
in June, to stand between Paris and the foe, and 
then participated, along with the 77th, in the coun- 
ter-offensive which reduced the Marne salient, — or 
as the French call it, the second Battle of the Marne, 
a simple, suggestive, and glorious name. Chateau- 
Thierry had thus been a stage in passage from the 
British to the American sector, and the call for the 
defense of Paris had been serviceable to the Ameri- 
can command as a reason for detaching American 
divisions, which the British had trained, from Sir 
Douglas Haig, who, as he is Scotch, was none the 
less thriftily desirous of retaining them. 

The 33rd Division, remaining at the British front 
after the other divisions had departed, gained ex- 



4 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

perience in offensive operations, as we know, which 
approximated that of the others at Chateau-Thierry, 
when, fighting in the inspiring company of the Aus- 
tralians in the Somme attacks beginning August 8th, 
the Illinois men took vital positions and numerous 
prisoners and guns. Though these four divisions, 
the 4th, 28th, 33rd, and 77th, had not had the long 
experience of the four pioneer divisions, they had 
had their " baptism of fire " under severe conditions, 
they knew German machine-gun methods from close 
contact, and they had the conviction of their power 
from having seen the enemy yield before their deter- 
mined attacks. To Marshal Foch they had brought 
further evidence that the character of the pioneer 
divisions with their long training in France was com- 
mon to all American troops. The National Guard 
divisions which had arrived late in France, though 
they had been filled with recruits, had, as the back- 
ground of their training camp experience at home, 
not only the established inheritance of their organi- 
zation but the thankless and instructive service on 
the Mexican border, where for many months they 
had been on a war footing. 

According to European standards none of the 
divisions in the first shock of the Meuse-Argonne 
battle was veteran, of course ; and the mission given 
them would have been considered beyond their 
powers. Indeed, the disaster of broken units, dis- 



NEW AND OLD DIVISIONS 49 

persing from lack of tactical skill, once they were 
against the fortifications, would have been consid- 
ered inevitable. A veteran or " shock " division in 
the European sense — such divisions as the Euro- 
pean armies used for major attacks and difficult 
operations — would have had a superior record in 
four years of war. Its survivors, through absorp- 
tion no less than training, would have developed a 
craft which was now instinctive. They were Euro- 
peans fighting in Europe ; they knew their enemy and 
how he would act in given emergencies; they knew 
the signs which showed that he was weakening or 
that he was going to resist sturdily; they knew how 
to find dead spaces, and how to avoid fire; and they 
had developed that sense of team-play which adjusts 
itself automatically to situations. All that our di- 
visions knew of these things they had learned from 
schooling or in one or two battles. We had the 
advantage that experience had not hardened our 
initiative until we might be overcautious on some 
occasions. 

The battle order of our divisions for the Meuse- 
Argonne battle was not b'ased on the tactical adapta- 
tion of each unit to the task on its front. We must 
be satisfied with placing a division in line at a point 
somewhere between the Meuse and the Forest's 
edge where transportation most favored its arrival 
on time. One division was as good as another in a 



50 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

battle arranged in such haste. The French Fourth 
Army was to attack on the west of the Argonne 
Forest; on its right a regiment of the 92nd (col- 
ored) Division, National Army, with colored offi- 
cers, was to form the connecting link between the 
French and the American forces. For men with no 
experience under heavy fire, who were not long ago 
working in the cotton fields and on the levees of the 
South, this was a trying assignment, which would 
have tested veterans. Never before had colored 
men under colored officers gone against a powerful 
trench system. All the British and French colored 
troops had white officers, and our other colored divi- 
sion, the 93rd, which was attached to the French 
Army through the summer and fall of 19 18, had 
white officers. 

We come now to our divisions in place on the 
night of September 25th, with whom will ever rest 
the honor of having stormed the fortifications. 
When I consider each one's part I should like to 
write it in full. I shall mention them individually 
when that best suits the purpose of my chronicle, 
and at other times I shall describe the common 
characteristics of their fighting: in either case mind- 
ful of the honor they did us all as Americans. 



IV 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 

The Metropolitan Division in the Argonne proper — Six weeks 
without rest — Direct attack impossible in the Forest — Similar 
history of the Keystone Division: — Pennsylvania pride — Its 
mission the " scalloping " of the Forest edge — The stalwart 
men of the 35th Division — Storming the Aire heights — Fine 
spirit of the Pacific Slope Division — A five-mile advance 
projected for the Ohio Division — North and South in the 79th 
Division — Never in line before, it was to strike deepest. 

Three National Army divisions were to be in the 
initial attack. It was a far cry for the men who a 
year before had tumbled into the training camps at 
home, without knowledge of the manual of arms or 
of the first elements of army etiquette and discipline, 
to the march of trained divisions forward into line 
of battle in France. On the extreme left of the line 
was the Liberty Division, from New York City. 
The metropolitans were given the task of taking not 
a town, but a forest, with which their name will be 
as long connected as with our largest city. Its left 
flank on the western edge of the Argonne Forest 
and its right on the eastern, the 77th had a long 
divisional front of over four miles; but it would 
have been unsatisfied if it had had to share the 
Forest. The Forest was its very own. The public 

51 



'52 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

at home seemed to have the idea that the whole 
battle was fought there. If it had been, the 77th 
would have had to share credit with twenty other 
divisions, which had equally stiff fighting in patches 
of woods which were equally dense even if they 
were not called forests. 

If the Forest were stripped bare of its trees, it 
would present a great ridge-like bastion cut by 
ravines, with irregular hills and slopes of a char- 
acter which, even though bald, would have been for- 
midable in defense. Its timber had nothing in com- 
mon with the park-like conception of a European 
forest, in which the ground opens between tree 
trunks in lines as regular as in an orchard. If the 
Argonne had been without roads, the Red Indians 
might have been as much at home in its depths as 
in the primeval Adirondacks. Underbrush grew as 
freely as in second-growth woods in our New Eng- 
land or Middle States ; the leaves had not yet begun 
to fall from the trees. 

It had not been until September 15th that the 77th 
had been relieved from the operations in the 
Chateau-Thierry region. A new division, fresh 
from training at the British front and in Lorraine, 
it had gone into line in August to hold the bank of 
the Vesle against continuous sniping, gassing, and 
artillery fire ; and later, after holding the bottom of 
a valley with every avenue of approach shelled in 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 53 

nerve-racking strain, it had shown the mettle of 
the Americans of the tenements by fighting its way 
forward for ten days toward the Aisne Canal. It 
had been in action altogether too long according to 
accepted standards, though this seems only to have 
tempered its steel for service in the Argonne. 

Ordinarily a new division would not only have 
been given time to recover from battle exhaustion, 
which is so severe because in the excitement men are 
carried forward by sheer will beyond all normal re- 
actions to fatigue, but it would have been given time 
for drill and for applying the lessons of its first im- 
portant battle experience. The value of this is the 
same to a division as a holiday at the mountains or 
the seashore to a man on the edge of a nervous 
breakdown. He recovers his physical vitality, and 
has leisure to see himself and his work in per- 
spective. 

Instead of knowing the relaxation and the joy of 
settling down in billets and receiving the attention of 
the "Y" and other ministrants, of having plenty 
of time to write letters home, and of receiving from 
home letters that were not more than six weeks old, 
the men of the 77th had long marches to make 
through ruined country, and were then switched 
about, in indescribably uncomfortable travel, on the 
way to the Argonne. The division commander 
made no complaint on this score; but it was a fact 



54 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

to be taken into consideration. The 77th was short 
of transport; its horses were worn down. Yet, 
faithful to orders, its artillery as well as its infantry 
was up on the night of the 24th. Owing to the 
length of its front, all four infantry regiments were 
put into line, which meant that there could be no 
relief for any units after they reached their destina- 
tion. 

We admire hardy frontiersmen, of whom we ex- 
pect such endurance ; but what of these city-dwellers, 
these men from the factories and offices, short of 
stature and slight of body? Who that had seen 
them before they entered a training camp would 
have thought that they could be equal to carrying 
their heavy packs on long marches and undergoing 
the physical strain of battle? Their fortitude was 
not due altogether to good food and the healthy 
regime of disciplined camps; it was the spirit of 
their desire to prove that they were the " best " 
division because they were the " Liberty Division." 
Their hearty, resolute commander, Major-General 
Robert Alexander, was justly proud of them and 
believed in them; and they had excellent officers, 
who held them up by example and discipline to high 
standards. 

Faith in the impregnability of the Forest, from 
ancient times a bulwark for which armies competed, 
had not led the Germans to neglect any detail in 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 55 

improving its natural defenses. In that area where 
for four years the French and the Germans had 
stared across No Man's Land at each other, the 
reasons for the enforced stalemate were almost as 
obvious as those for the truce between the whale 
and the elephant. Either army had at its back the 
cover of woodland, while the slopes about the 
trenches formed a belt of shell-craters littered with 
trunks of trees. Any attempt to take the forest by 
frontal attack must have been madness. Action in 
front must be only an incident of pressure, and con- 
fined to " mopping up," as action on either side 
forced the enemy's withdrawal from a cross-fire. 
This was bound to be our plan, as the enemy fore- 
saw; we shall see that he governed himself accord- 
ingly. 

The 28th Division, which had been on the left of 
the 77th in the advance to the Aisne, was again on 
its left. These had really been the first two Ameri- 
can divisions to fight side by side under an Ameri- 
can corps command, that of Major-General Robert 
L. Bullard. In the enterprise that they were now 
undertaking they had need of every detail of team- 
play that they had learned. 

Some elements of the 28th, which was then just 
arriving in the Chateau-Thierry region, had been 
in action against the fifth German offensive; then 
it had been pushed across the Marne, where it had 



56 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

been put in by brigades and moved about under 
harassing circumstances in the ensuing counter- 
offensive. Later, having proved its worthiness for 
the honor, as an intact division it had taken over 
from the exhausted 32nd on the Vesle. Practically, 
from July 15 th until it went to the Argonne it had 
had no rest. It had held not only the town of 
Fismes on the bank of the Vesle, but the exposed 
position of the little town of Fismettes on the other 
side of the river, during that period when the Ger- 
mans were inclined to make a permanent stand 
there if their digging, their sniping, and their bat- 
tering artillery fire, showered from the heights upon 
the 28th and the 77th in the valley, were any 
criterion. In the subsequent advance to the Aisne, 
and later in the transfer to the Argonne, the division 
had to submit to the same kind of irregularities and 
discomfort as the 77th, and to suffer in the same 
way for want of adequate transport and of leisure 
for studying its latest battle lessons for use in the 
next battle. 

There is a general idea that such populous states 
as New York and Pennsylvania lack state pride, 
particularly in the sense of the southern states; but 
any state, whose National Guardsmen were numer- 
ous enough to form a complete division on the new 
war footing, had the advantage of the unity of senti- 
ment of the old family, which does not have to in- 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 57 

elude strangers at its board. The 28th's deeds were 
Pennsylvania's. It stood proudly and exclusively for 
Pennsylvania with her wealth and prosperity and all 
her numerous colleges, large and small, from Alle- 
gheny in the northwest to the University of Penn- 
sylvania. The men were evidently capable of eating 
three and four square meals a day, and they looked 
as if they were used to having them when they were 
at home. 

"What about politics?" the critic always asks 
about any National Guard division. If there were 
politics in the 28th it was so mixed up with march- 
ing and fighting — and the men of the 28th were 
always doing one or the other when I saw them — • 
that it was unrecognizable to one so unused to poli- 
tics as the writer. Certainly, it was a good kind of 
politics, I should say, in that Pennsylvania had taken 
a downright interest in her National Guard, which 
was now bearing fruit. The 2 8th's commander, 
Major-General Charles H. Muir, was a man of 
equanimity and force, who had the strength of char- 
acter, on occasion, to stand up to an Army staff when 
he knew that its orders were impracticable. The 
staff respected him for his confidence in the judg- 
ment of the man on the spot. 

The 28th's losses both in officers and in men in 
that excoriating progress from the Vesle to the 
Aisne had been the price of a gallantry which was 



58 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

a further reproof to the scepticism in certain quar- 
ters about the National Guard. Officers who had 
been killed or wounded had been replaced by young 
men who were often from the training camps though 
not Pennsylvanians ; and in the fierce illumination of 
battle much had been learned about the qualities of 
the survivors. Some of these who had hitherto been 
called politicians had entirely overcome the asper- 
sion. Others who had worn themselves out physi- 
cally might be given a period of recuperation even if 
the division had none. The 28th had been indeed 
battle-tried in all that the word means. If it could 
have had two weeks before the Meuse-Argonne in 
which to digest its lessons, this would have been only 
fair to it as a division: though probably its deter- 
mination would have been no stronger. 

The 28th's front was from the edge of the Forest 
on its left to the village of Boureuilles on its right. 
Astride the Aire River it linked the Forest with the 
main battle-line. While maintaining its uniformity 
of advance on its right, its left had the same difficult 
maneuver in " scalloping " the eastern edge of the 
Forest as the French in " scalloping " the western 
edge. This meant that the 28th must storm the 
wooded escarpments which the Forest throws out on 
the western side of the Aire. On the eastern side of 
the valley were heights which interlocked with the 
escarpments. As one Guardsman said, the division 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 59 

had a worse job than a Democrat running for gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania in an off year for Democrats. 

Now the 28th could not succeed unless the division 
on its right took the heights on the eastern side of 
the Aire. If the 28th failed, then the whole turning 
movement of the Army offensive toward the main 
series of heights which formed the crest of the 
whale-back was endangered. On the right of the 
28th was the 35th Division, National Guard from 
Kansas and Missouri, which must offer the courage 
and vigor which is bred in their home country in 
place of the battle experience which had been the 
fortune of the Pennsylvanians. Major-General 
William M. Wright had been the first commander 
of the 35th. He was a man of the world, most 
human in his feeling and sound in his principles of 
war, with a personality which was particularly ef- 
fective with troops of sturdy individualistic char- 
acter, who were unaccustomed by their tradition of 
self-reliant independence of thought to the arbitrary 
system which a regular army develops in the han- 
dling of recruits in time of peace. Leonard Wood 
had the same class of men from the same region in 
the 89th, which Wright later led in the Meuse- 
Argonne battle with brilliant results. 

Soon after the 35th arrived behind the British 
lines, Wright's accepted knowledge of regular army 
personnel and his capacity for inspiring harmonious 



6o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

effort in any group of subordinates led General 
Pershing to set him the task of organizing corps 
staffs, among them the Fifth, which was to develop 
exemplary traditions. Major-General Peter E. 
Traub, a scholarly soldier, fully equipped in the 
theories of war, succeeded him in command of the 
35th. Traub's brigade of the 26th Division had 
received at Seicheprey the shock of the first attack 
in force that the Germans had made against our 
troops, where the quality which the young officers 
and men had shown in face of a surprise by over- 
whelming numbers, and their prompt recovery of 
the town without waiting on superior orders, had 
reflected credit on their brigade. 

The physique and the good humor of the men of 
the 35th had been the admiration of everybody who 
had seen them after their arrival in the British area. 
The Guardsmen of Kansas had a fine tradition 
linked up with the career of Frederick Funston, who 
was in the fullest sense what is known as a born 
soldier. He was a combination of fire and steel; 
of human impulse and inherent common sense. His 
initiative was in tune with that of his Kansans. 
Through the authority of their faith in him he ap- 
plied stern discipline. 

With its left on Boureuilles and its right on 
Vauquois, the 35th must storm the heights of the 
eastern wall of the Aire under flanking artillery and 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 6t 

machine-gun fire from the escarpments of the Forest, 
unless these were promptly conquered by the 28th. 
No finer-looking soldiers ever went into action. 
Their eagerness was in keeping with their vitality. 
Compared to the little men of the 77th, who were 
overburdened with heavy packs, they were giants of 
the type which carried packs of double the army 
weight over the Chilcoot Pass in the Klondike rush. 
Their inheritance gave them not only the strength 
but the incentive of pioneers. Whoever had the 
leading and shaping of such a body of American 
citizens had a responsibility which went with a glori- 
ous opportunity. The stronger the men of a divi- 
sion, the abler the officers they require to be worthy 
of their potentiality. Given the battle experience 
of the 77th, under a Pershing, a Wood, a Bullard, 
a Summerall, or a Hines, and a group of officers as 
such a leader would have developed, the work of the 
35th would never have become a subject for discus- 
sion: but we shall come to this later on. 

On the right of the 35th we had the 91st, 
National Army from the Pacific Coast, as the left 
division of the Fifth or center Corps, with its front 
from Vauquois to Avocourt. Its commander was 
Major-General William H. Johnston, a redoubt- 
able fighter and vigorous for his years, as anyone 
could see at a glance. There was no question as to 
the character of his men, who were six thousand 



62 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

miles from home. Their physique was as good as 
that of the 35th, as you know if you know the region 
where they were called to service by the draft. 
Never before under fire, they were to fight their 
way through woods by a frontal attack, and then 
under the enemy's observation into an open ravine, 
and on through that up forbidding slopes. An ap- 
pealing sentiment attached to this division from the 
other side of the continent, no less than to the 77th, 
from which it differed in its personnel as the Pacific 
Slope differs from the streets of New York. There 
were city men in its ranks, but not in the sense of city 
men from New York; and there were ranchmen, and 
lumbermen, and those among them who spoke 
broken English were not from tailors' benches. 

On the right of the 91st was the 37th, Ohio 
National Guard under Major-General Charles S. 
Farnsworth, a regular officer of high repute, who 
was to take the division through its terrific experi- 
ence in the Meuse-Argonne and afterward to Bel- 
gium. Why so excellent a division as the 37th 
should not have been earlier in France may be re- 
ferred to geography, which gave an advantage to 
National Guard divisions from the seaboard states. 
The 37th had waited and drilled long for its chance, 
which now came in generous measure. After break- 
ing through the trench system it must storm by fron- 
tal attack, for a depth of three miles, woods as thick 



THE ORDER OF BATTLE 63 

as the Argonne ; and this was only a little more than 
half the distance set for a single day's objective. 
Therefore, without previous trial in grand offen- 
sives, it was assigned a mission which would ordi- 
narily have been supposed to be disastrous against 
even a moderate defense. The 37th was without its 
own artillery, but it had been assigned on short 
notice the artillery of the 30th Division, which, how- 
ever zealous and well-trained, had not worked with 
the division or ever operated in a serious action, let 
alone protected infantry advancing for such a dis- 
tance over such monstrously difficult ground. 

On the right of the 37th was the 79th, National 
Army drawn from Virginia, Maryland, and the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. Major-General Joseph E. 
Kuhn, who was in command, was well-known as an 
able engineer officer. He had served as an attache 
with the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War, see- 
ing more of the operations than any other single 
foreign officer; and he had been an attache in Ger- 
many early in the Great War, afterward becoming 
president of the War College in Washington. Aside 
from this equipment his untiring energy, his high 
spirits, and his personality fitted him for inculcating 
in a division confidence in itself and its leadership. 

The 79th, with men from both sides of Mason 
and Dixon's line, united North and South in its 
ranks. Since its arrival from the States it had hardly 



64 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had time to become acclimatized. In place of its 
own artillery, which was not yet equipped, it had 
not even a homogeneous artillery brigade. Of 
American artillery (aside from seventeen of the 
French batteries upon which we were relying so 
largely for our preliminary bombardment) it had 
three regiments, less six batteries, from the experi- 
enced 32nd Division, and one regiment from the 
41st Division. Though the 79th had never been 
under fire before, though it had only training-camp 
experience, it was expected, after taking the first- 
line fortifications, to cover the most ground of any 
division on the first day, and though it did not have 
to fight its way through any important woods it was 
to proceed along the valley of the Montfaucon road, 
passing over formidable ridges which were under 
the observation of woods on either flank capable of 
concealing any amount of enemy artillery. 



ON THE MEUSE SIDE 

The ground of the Verdun battle — The Crown Prince's observa- 
tory — The Third Corps to move the right flank down the 
Meuse — Businesslike quality of the 4th Division — A marshy 
front and no roads — Swinging movement of the Blue Ridge 
Division — The Illinois Division to secure the right flank — 
Dominating heights east of the Meuse. 

At this point let us consider the missions of the 
three corps. Liggett's First, with the 77th, 28th, 
and 35th Divisions, had the problem of the left flank, 
the conquest of the Argonne Forest, the valley of 
the Aire, and the heights of the eastern valley wall, 
which was so essential to supporting the movement 
of Cameron's Fifth Corps in the center. The Fifth, 
with the 91st, 37th, and 79th Divisions, was to make 
the bulge of the sweep toward the main crests of the 
whale-back. Its objective on the first day was the 
town of Montfaucon, whose whitish ruins on the 
distant hilltop pretty well commanded all the ter- 
rain on the corps front. Here the Crown Prince 
through his telescope, at the safe distance which was 
in keeping with the strong sense of self-preservation 
of the Hohenzollerns, had watched some of the at- 
tacks on Verdun. 

65 



66 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

This sector was near enough to the battleground 
of Verdun to have participated in some of the 
volume of shell-fire which had left no square yard 
of earth in No Man's Land, or for half a mile 
on either side of the trenches, untouched by explo- 
sions. The thicker the shell-craters, the more diffi- 
cult it is to keep uniformity of movement. They 
are useful for cover for a halted charge, but for a 
charge that is intended to go through, as ours was, 
they meant that troops must pick their way over 
unstable footing. In view of the possibilities of 
French counter-attacks the Germans had hardly been 
negligent in perfecting all their defenses during the 
Verdun battle. 

The groups of woods south of Montfaucon and 
north and west of Avocourt was the heart of the 
German defense against the Fifth Corps. Against 
Cheppy Wood which covered Vauquois the French, 
in 19 1 5 when small offensives were still the rule, 
had made many attacks in order to gain the domi- 
nating position of Vauquois; and later, in the 
Verdun battle and subsequent offensive operations by 
the French, the Germans had used the woods as 
shelter for reserves, which drew persistent shell-fire 
of large caliber from the French. A thick second 
growth had sprouted up around the shell-craters and 
broken timbers, which afforded concealment to the 
enemy and confused any platoon or company com- 



ON THE MEUSE SIDE 67 

mander in keeping his men together and in touch 
with the platoon or company on either flank. 

The assignment of such an ambitious objective to 
these three divisions required an abounding faith 
in their manhood, initiative, and training upon the 
part of an audacious command. I may add that 
before the attack the Germans had taken one pris- 
oner from the 79th Division, which they thus identi- 
fied; they did not know of the presence of the other 
two divisions. As the 79th had never been in line 
before, they were warranted in thinking that a green 
division could be there for no other purpose than 
the usual trench training which we had systematically 
given all our divisions before they went into serious 
action. When the 79th came rushing on toward 
Montfaucon on the morning of the 26th, the enemy's 
surprise was warranted by all their canons of mili- 
tary experience. 

The Third Corps on the right flank, with its right 
on the Meuse River, had in a broad sense the same 
mission as the First in supporting the main drive 
toward the whale-back by the Fifth. On its left in 
liaison with the 79th was the 4th, the only regular 
division in the attack, under Major-General John 
L. Hines, whose ability was later rewarded by a 
corps command. Regular divisions had a certain ad- 
vantage in the assignment of experienced profes- 
sional officers and in the confidence of the staff in. 



68 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the value of regular traditions which must be main- 
tained. Though in detached units, the 4th had had 
a thorough trial in the Marne counter-offensive of 
July 1 8th to 24th. Then it had been swung round, 
and as an intact division had taken over from the 
42nd, after the heights of the Ourcq were gained, 
for the final pursuit to the Vesle, where it had a 
taste of shells, gas, and machine-gun fire in the 
11 pocket " before it was relieved by the 77th and 
started for Saint-Mihiel. The 4th was a thor- 
oughly regular and singularly efficient division, dis- 
inclined to advertisement, doing its duty systemati- 
cally and unflinchingly. 

At the outset of its advance it would have, to 
cross marshy ground and the Forges Brook, from 
which the footbridges had naturally been removed 
by the enemy. On the left it was to keep up with 
the swift progress of the 79th, with its course domi- 
nated on the left by the Montfaucon heights, and on 
the right by the heights east of the Meuse — of which 
we shall hear much before the story of the Meuse- 
Argonne battle is told. There were wicked slopes 
and woods to be conquered. Indeed, its position 
on the right flank of the 79th confronted as stern 
and complex difficulties as that of the 37th on the 
left flank of the 79th. 

On its right was the 80th Division under Major- 
General Adelbert Cronkhite, sturdy, thick-set, cut 



ON THE MEUSE SIDE 69 

out of sandstone, who faced the world all four- 
square with his Blue Ridge men. The 80th had 
done well at the British front, and had been in 
reserve at Saint-Mihiel. Though it had its own 
divisional artillery and its units complete, this was 
its first experience in a drive through first-line forti- 
fications for an extensive objective. If it had not so 
far to go as the 4th, its trying maneuver in swinging 
toward the Meuse included passing between the Jure 
and Forges Woods, which, unless cleared of the 
enemy, would enfilade its advance with machine-gun 
fire. 

The 33rd Division, Illinois National Guard, had 
the extreme right. I have mentioned already the 
preparation which the 33rd had had in the August 
offensive with the British. Major-General George 
Bell was calm and suave, but a stalwart disci- 
plinarian. Before leaving the States he had 
eliminated many officers who for temperament, 
physical disability, or other reasons appeared less 
serviceable abroad than at home. This enabled him 
to travel to France without excess baggage, and to 
arrive there with his organization knit together by 
a harmonious and spirited personnel. As for his 
men, they were from Illinois and of the Illinois 
National Guard, as you may learn in Cairo, Spring- 
field, or Chicago, for Illinois had been one of the 
forward states in supporting its Guardsmen. 



70 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The 33rd was to swing up along the Meuse by 
noon of the first day, and to rest there as a pivot 
for the Third Corps, — a delicate operation. Its 
position was as picturesque as its record was various, 
in its service first with the British under the Aus- 
tralian Corps, then with a French, and later with an 
American Corps. If the war had lasted long enough 
the Illinois men might have been sent to serve on 
the Italian front, to complete their itinerary of mili- 
tary cosmopolitanism. At its back now was the 
Mort Homme, or Dead Man's Hill, whose mention 
in the communiques during the Verdun fighting was 
frequent in the days when the world hung on the 
news of a few hundred yards gained or lost on the 
right or left bank of the Meuse. There under coun- 
tering barrages from the quick-firers and the plow- 
ing by high explosive shells, Frenchman and Ger- 
man had groveled in the torn earth, mixed with 
blood and flesh, between the throes of hectic 
charges for advantage. The Germans won the hill, 
but eventually the French regained it. Then silence 
fell on the shambles where the unrecognizable dead 
rested, and above them rose not the red poppies of 
the poet's pictures, but weed and ragged grass from 
the edges of the shell-craters. 

Such was the texture of the rising undulating 
carpet unrolled to the northeast over the battle- 
field of Verdun. In the foreground it was varie- 



ON THE MEUSE SIDE 71 

gated by the ruins of villages and those exclamation 
points of desolation, the limbless trees, which melted 
into its greenish-ashen sweep over the fort-crowned 
hills in the distance. Beyond them was the plain of 
the Woevre; and beyond that was Germany. An 
occasional shell-burst showed that the volcano of 
war still simmered; its report was an echo of the 
crashing thunders of the past, which we were to 
awaken again in the valley of the Meuse. 

The Meuse seemed only a larger Aire, asking its 
way sinuously in this broken country. As vision 
followed its course past the German trench system 
in front of the Mort Homme and past the area of 
destruction, it was arrested by the bald ridge of the 
Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378. Mark the 
name ! It will have a sinister part in our battle. 
Ten of our divisions were to know its wrath with- 
out knowing its name. Higher than any of the 
Verdun forts, except Douaumont, and higher than, 
the heights of the whale-back, it had been in the 
possession of the Germans since August, 19 14. 
From its summit observers could give the targets to 
the countless guns hidden in the woods and ravines 
of its reverse slopes. 

An offensive against frontal positions resembles 
the swinging open of double doors, with their hinges- 
at the points where the first-line fortifications are 
broken. The farther the doors are swung, the 



72 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

greater the danger of enemy pressure on the hinges, 
whose protection is the tactician's nightmare. In 
broadening his front of offensive operations by al- 
ternating attacks Marshal Foch may be said to 
have been opening several doors which were 
to become the alternately advancing panels of a 
screen. 

The Fourth French Army was the left flank of 
our army in the Meuse-Argonne. As its left, and 
therefore the left of the whole Franco-American 
attack, was making only a slight advance at the 
start, it was little exposed. Our Third Corps had 
the right flank of the whole movement, the Meuse 
River being the hinge, with the swing toward the 
west bank of the Meuse, which bends westward to- 
ward the heights of the whale-back on the Corps 
front. This gave it a frontal command of the west 
bank, while it put the German trench system on the 
east bank in the right rear of our line of general 
movement. Though the Meuse was an unfordable 
stream, and we held the bridgeheads to prevent any 
infantry counter-attack, this could not prevent cross- 
fire upon us from artillery and even from machine- 
guns. As from the Mort Homme one had a visual 
comprehension of the mission of the Third Corps, 
which was more informing, not to say more thrilling, 
than the study of maps at Headquarters, the inevi- 
table question came to mind as to what was being 



ON THE MEUSE SIDE 73 

done for our protection on the east bank. The 
answer was that French artillery and infantry were 
to undertake " exploitation." This was a familiar 
word, which could not intimidate the artillery on the 
Borne de Cornouiller. Forces in exploitation on the 
flanks, however encouraging in battle plans, form an 
elastic term in application, dependent upon what 
sacrifices they will make in the thankless task of 
diverting the enemy's fire to themselves. With the 
heights of the Meuse commanding one flank and the 
heights of the whale-back commanding the other, 
the Third Corps was to operate in the Meuse 
trough as in the pit of an amphitheater, striving to 
fight its way up the seats under a plunging lire from 
the gallery. 

Still, there was nothing else to be done. Some- 
one had to take punishment on the flanks for the 
support of the drive on the center. The grueling 
which the Third Corps was to endure in advancing 
on one side of the trough of a river valley beyond 
the enemy line on the other was as certain to entail 
severe losses as was the mission of the First Corps 
against the Argonne Forest and down the valley of 
the Aire. The duty of all concerned, in an offen- 
sive which was organized in haste in the hope of 
winning a great prize by springing into the breach 
of opportunity, was not to hesitate in consideration 
of handicaps, but to minimize them as much as pos- 



"74 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

sible in the initial plan, and then to strike in fullness 
of confidence and of all the power at our com- 
mand. The strategy of the battle was daring in con- 
ception, and resolute in execution. 



VI 



WE BREAK THROUGH 

French gunners at home in the landscape — Sleep by regulations 
in spite of suspense — " Over the top " not a rush — Difficulty of 
keeping to a time-table — Even with a guiding barrage — What 
barbed wire means — And the trench mazes beyond — Moving 
up behind the infantry. 

The Pacific Slope, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Penn- 
sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and New 
York thus had the honor of the initial attack in our 
greatest battle, in which men from every state in the 
Union were to have a part before it was won. In 
that area of rolling country from Verdun to the 
Bar-le-Duc-Clermont road, which had been stealthily 
peopled by our soldiers, the swarming of their khaki 
was relieved by scattered touches of the blue of the 
Frenchmen who had come to assist us. Though ours 
was the flesh and blood which was to do the fighting 
— every infantryman was an American — the French 
were filling the gaps in our equipment which we 
could have filled ourselves, as I have said, only by 
delaying the Meuse-Argonne offensive until the 
spring of 19 19 as we had originally planned. 

Under their camouflage curtains in an open field, 
or in the edge of a woods, or under the screen of 

75 



76 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

bushes which fringed a gully, the groups of French 
gunners seemed at home in a landscape that was 
native to them while it was alien to the Americans. 
When at rest their supple lounging attitudes had a 
certain defiance of formal military standards, as if 
French democracy were flouting Prussian militar- 
ism. When the order for firing came, the transition 
was to the alertness of the batter stepping up to 
the plate, and their swift movements had the grace 
and confidence of professional mastery which had 
long put behind it the rudimentary formalities of 
the drill-ground. They seemed a living part of the 
infantry, their pulse-beats answering the infantry's 
steps. Never were guests more welcome than they 
to our army. We could not have too many French 
guns — or cannon, as our communiques called them in 
recognition of the unfamiliarity of our public with 
military terms — playing on the enemy's trenches and 
barbed wire in the preliminary bombardment which 
blazed a way for the charge. 

I have known the suspense preceding many at- 
tacks while the darkness before dawn was slashed 
by the flashes from nearby gun mouths and splashed 
by the broad sheets of flame from distant gun 
mouths. There is nothing more contrary to nature 
than that the quiet hours of the night should be 
turned into an inferno of crashes and, at the 
moment of dawn, when the world refreshed looks 



WE BREAK THROUGH 77 

forward to a new day, men should be sent to their 
death. The suspense before the Meuse-Argonne 
attack was greater than before the Somme attack, 
when the British new army, after its months of 
preparation and nearly two years of training, was 
sent against the German line; it was greater than 
before Saint-Mihiel, our own first offensive. 

At Saint-Mihiel we had hints that the enemy 
would oppose us with only a rearguard action. Our 
mission would be finished with the first onslaught; 
we had only to cut the salient; the result was meas- 
urably certain, while in the Meuse-Argonne it was 
on the knees of the gods. The Germans could 
afford to yield at Saint-Mihiel; they could not in the 
Meuse-Argonne, where, if informed of the char- 
acter of our plan, they might make a firm resistance 
in the first-line fortifications or at such points in 
them as suited their purpose in seeking to draw us 
into salients, to be slaughtered by enfilade fire as 
the French were in their spring offensive of 19 17. 

After the preliminary bombardment began at mid- 
night, our American Army world, as detached in its 
preoccupation with its own existence, as much apart 
from the earth, as if it were on another planet, 
waited on the dawn of morning, which was the 
dawn of battle. The stars which were out in their 
distant serenity had a matter-of-fact appeal to gen- 
erals to whom a clear day meant no quagmires to 



7 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

impede the advance. It was the business of all 
except the gunners and the truck-drivers, or of those 
speeding on errands to tie up any loose ends of 
organization, to try to force a little sleep. Even the 
infantry, with the shells screaming over their heads, 
were supposed to make the most of their inertia in 
rest which would give them reserve strength for the 
work ahead. 

This was in keeping with the formula which had 
been studied and worked out through experience. 
No one not firing shells could be of any service in 
smashing in strong points or cutting barbed wire. 
Particularly it behooved high staff officers and com- 
manders to lie down, with minds closed to all 
thoughts of mistakes already made or apprehensions 
of future mistakes, in order to be fortified with 
steady nerves, clear vision and stored vitality for the 
decisions which they would have to make when they 
had news of the progress of the action. The plans 
for the attack were set; they might not be changed 
now; the attack must be precipitated. Aides pro- 
tected their generals from interruption, and ar- 
ranged that they should have food to their liking, 
and as comfortable a bed as possible. No genius 
composing a sonnet or a sonata could have been 
more securely protected in his seclusion than a corps 
commander. The rigorous drill which had formed 
the men in the front line to be the pawns of superior 



WE BREAK THROUGH 79 

will was applied to keep the superior will in training 
for its task. 

General Pershing kept faith with the formula, 
and many others followed his example, though 
junior staff officers worked through the night. They 
were plentiful, and " expendable," as the army say- 
ing goes, as expendable in nervous prostration as 
were in wounds and death the young lieutenants who 
were to lead their platoons into the hell of machine- 
gun fire. Waiting — waiting — waiting while the guns 
thundered were the ambulances beside the road, the 
divisional transport, the ammunition and engineer 
trains, the aviators with their planes tuned up and 
ready, the doctors and nurses at the dressing-stations 
and evacuation hospitals, and the reserve troops in 
billets. Officially through his orders everyone con- 
cerned knew only his own part, but all knew without 
asking that an unprecedented ordeal was coming. 

It was easier for French and British veterans, 
familiarized by other offensives with the roar and 
the flashes of artillery, to relax than for Americans 
who were having the experience for the first time. 
With sufficient practice one may learn to sleep with 
a six-inch howitzer battery in an adjoining field shak- 
ing the earth. Many times during the Meuse- 
Argonne battle I have seen our own veterans giving 
proof of such hardihood; but on this night of Sep- 
tember 25th it was not in human nature for all the 



80 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

thousands who were to have no sleep the next day 
or the next night to summon oblivion to their sur- 
roundings. Those who fell asleep slept with nerves 
taut with anticipation and in the consciousness of 
a nightmare, in which the rending thunders were 
mixed with reflection upon their own arduous efforts 
and their part in the future. Everyone was a runner 
crouched for the pistol-shot, as he awaited the dawn. 
The great test for which all had prepared individ- 
ually and collectively for two years was coming 
tomorrow. 

With the first flush of thin light the observation 
balloons had risen in stately dignity from the earth 
mist, and the planes had taken to the sky and swept 
out over the enemy lines : the combat planes seeking 
foes and the observers to watch the progress of the 
charge or enemy movements or the location of bat- 
teries or of machine-gun nests which were harassing 
our infantry. Mobilization by the aviators for the 
offensive had not been hampered by the problems of 
one-way and two-way roads. They flew over from 
Saint-Mihiel the afternoon before or on the morn- 
ing the battle began. 

At 5.30, just as a moving man would be visible a 
few yards away, from the Meuse to the western edge 
of the Argonne, where we had our liaison with the 
French who advanced at the same moment, our men 
left the old French trenches and started for the 



WE BREAK THROUGH 81 

German trenches. Everyone is familiar with the 
phrase " going over the top," yet despite the count- 
less descriptions everyone who saw an attack for the 
first time remarked, " I didn't know it was like 
that! " The system of the advance on the morning 
of September 26th accorded with the accepted prac- 
tice of the time. In their familiarity with the system 
soldiers and correspondents have taken it for 
granted that what was common knowledge to them 
was common knowledge to all the world. Only 
when they returned home did they realize their 
error, and learn that ignorance of fundamentals in- 
grained in army experience had made their narra- 
tives Greek to all who had not been in action. 

The average man is slow to yield his idea that 
a charge is an impetuous sweep. It sounds more 
real to say that " the boys rushed " than to say that 
they advanced with the sedateness of a G. A. R. 
parade on Decoration Day, which is more like what 
really happened. Indeed, they simply walked, un- 
heroic as that may seem; and from high ground, or 
better still from a plane flying low, an observer saw 
to the limit of vision right and left men proceeding 
at a set and regular pace. The more uniform and 
the more automatic this was, the better. On closer 
view every man, except in height and physique, was 
a duplicate of the others, in helmet, in pack, in gas 
mask, in every detail of uniform, even in the way 



82 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

he carried his rifle with its glistening bayonet, which 
was the only relief to khaki* on the background of 
somber-tinted earth. 

Every man, every platoon, and on through the 
different units to divisions and corps, was moving on 
a time schedule. A competition between companies 
to " get there " first would have resulted from the 
start in a hopeless tangle. If not literally, it may be 
said broadly that each company was to be at a given 
point on the map at a given hour; and if one com- 
pany, or battalion or regiment, for that matter, out- 
distanced another, it was because it had kept its 
schedule and the other had not. In case it became 
" heady " and was on its objective in advance of 
schedule, it ran the risk of " exposing its flanks." At 
least that is the theory of the staff in its essence. 
An ideal army, according to the staff, would be at 
a given line on the map at 10.30, at another at 
11.30, and so on. This might be possible if there 
were no enemy to consider, although it would require 
an adept army, as everyone who has ever drilled 
recruits well appreciates. He knows how long it 
takes to train them, and to learn how to direct a 
small force in carrying out satisfactorily a practice 
skirmish evolution over slightly uneven ground. 
The gregarious instinct of itself seems to break uni- 
formity by drawing men into groups in face of in- 
fantry fire in battle for the first time, as well as 



WE BREAK THROUGH 83 

eagerness to close with the enemy and gravitation 
away from the points of its concentration. Shell- 
bursts scatter them, casualties make gaps which lead 
to further disorganization. 

Could our army have had reproduced for its edifi- 
cation the confusion of the battle of Bull Run or of 
Shiloh, it would have realized the purpose of all the 
painstaking drill, the monotonous and wearing dis- 
cipline, which made the well-ordered movement pos- 
sible. Its very deliberateness in maintaining the 
coordination of all its units gave it a majesty in its 
broad and mighty sweep, which was more like the 
sweep of a great river than the cataract rush of the 
small forces of the old days, which the public still 
continued to visualize as a charge. I thought of it 
too as in keeping with the organization of modern 
life, in the trains entering and leaving a great city 
station or the methodical processes of a vast manu- 
facturing concern. 

How did our men know whether or not they were 
keeping their schedule? Did they look at their 
watches as they counted their steps? They had a 
monitor at first in the rolling barrage, that curtain of 
fire which preceded them. This was their moving 
shield which the guns far in rear provided for their 
guidance as well as protection. If they came too 
close to the barrage, they were exposed no less than 
their enemies to death from its hail. 



84 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

We may have a comparison in marching behind a 
road sprinkler, with orders to keep just out of 
reach of its spray, which will be obeyed if the spray 
consist of nitric acid instead of water. The more 
guns the stronger the shield. We could never have 
an excess of guns as Grant had at the outset of the 
Wilderness campaign, when he sent many batteries 
of the short-range pieces of those days to the rear 
for want of room on a narrow front in which to 
maneuver them. Caesar applied the first barrage in 
France in his tactical use of the shields of his legions, 
who owed their success to systematic training no less 
than we in the Meuse-Argonne. His men had to 
carry their own shields; the modern soldier has 
enough to carry without carrying his. 

Suspense was most taut, it was agonizing, as every 
soldier knows, in the waiting hours ticking away into 
waiting minutes before the charge. As the final 
minute approached, the veteran, as a connoisseur in 
death's symbols, might find assurance in the strength, 
and apprehension in the weakness, of the supporting 
barrage laid down on the enemy trenches. Those of 
our men who had not been in battle before could 
have no such prescience. They did know that when 
they left their trenches the full length of their bodies 
would be exposed. They would march, rifle in hand, 
without firing, while only the shield of the shells 
from friendly guns screaming over their heads — the 



WE BREAK THROUGH 85 

greater the volume, the sweeter the music — could 
silence the fire of rifles and machine-guns which had 
them at merciless point-blank range. Instantly they 
climbed " over the top," anticipation became realiza- 
tion. One ceased to listen to his heart-beats. The 
emotion became that of action. Suspense became ob- 
jective, merged in responsibility for every man in 
watching where he stepped as he moved toward his 
goal, and for every captain and lieutenant in direct- 
ing his company or platoon. 

The most careful maneuvering on fields at home 
was poor preparation for No Man's Land, which 
is like nothing else in the world except No Man's 
Land. Millions of soldiers know it through long 
watches over its dreary lifeless space, and more 
vividly through crossing it in a charge. For four 
years it had been the zone of death where no soldier 
from either side ventured except at night on patrol 
or in a raid or general attack. All this time shells 
had been pummeling it. The rims of craters, of 
sizes varying with the calibers of the shells, joined 
each other; old craters had been partly filled by 
later bursts. This continued pestling of the soil with 
nothing to press it down but the rain made it the 
more spongy in wet weather and the looser in dry 
weather. The heads of the men bobbed as they 
advanced, stepping in and out of craters, and wove 
in and out as they passed around craters. The 



86 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

rims often gave way with their weight, or they 
slipped on the dew-moist weeds that fringed them or 
upon some " dud " shell hidden in the weeds, as 
their attention was diverted from the ground under 
foot by the burst of an enemy shell or of one from 
their own guns which fell dangerously short. 

As our artillery, in order to preserve the element 
of surprise, had not " registered " with practice 
shots, it was firing strictly by the map ; and, though 
its accuracy was wonderful, inexperienced gunners 
manning guns which had not had the allowances for 
error recently tabulated, were bound, in some cases, 
to send their shells wide of the mark. The big 
calibers might fail to destroy " strong points " that 
held machine-gun nests, or a battery of seventy-fives 
fail to cut the section of wire which was its assign- 
ment. For these mistakes the infantry must suffer. 
It is the infantry which always pays the price in 
Jjlood for all mistakes ; and the transfer of an officer 
to Blois or the demotion of a general officer would 
not bring back their dead. 

Their immediate concern, as that of every in- 
fantryman had been in every charge throughout the 
war, as they crossed No Man's Land, was the wire 
Entanglements. All the original wire, four years' 
exposure to the weather making its rusty barbs the 
more threatening, was still there in some form or 
other, though it had been ruptured or further twisted 



WE BREAK THROUGH 87 

by previous bombardments whose craters only added 
to the difficulties of passage. Breaks had been filled 
by new wire, which rather supplemented the old than 
took its place. Additional stretches had been put out 
at intervals to reinforce the defense of vital points. 
A half-dozen strands will halt a charge in its tracks; 
here was a close-woven skein, from three and four 
to twenty yards in depth. Where the depth was 
greatest, it was most likely to have a continuous un- 
cut stretch which the enemy had marked as a target 
for fire upon the arrested attackers. 

According to photographs of selected areas, which 
show a few bits of wire sticking out of a choppy 
sea of fresh earth, every square yard of which has 
been lashed by shell-fire, it would seem that artillery 
was accustomed to do as thorough mowing as a 
reaper in a field of grain. Even with treble our 
volume of artillery fire, taking treble the length of 
time of our bombardment, and with every shell per- 
fectly accurate on its target, we could hardly have 
accomplished any such blessed result. The best that 
could be expected was that lanes would be opened 
at frequent intervals. 

A break in the uniformity of advance appeared at 
once when one platoon or company had a clear space 
on its front while its neighbors had not. Suppose 
that for five hundred yards of distance the guns had 
completely failed and for five hundred yards on 



88 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

either side they had succeeded: then you had two 
exposed flanks sweeping forward into the trenches 
beyond, possibly against the enfilade fire of machine- 
gun points especially established for this opportunity. 

Where the guns had not done the work for them 
the men must do it themselves. If they had the tor- 
pedoes at the end of long sticks, resembling exag- 
gerated skyrockets, they might thrust these into the 
meshes and explode them to gain the destructive 
effect of shell-bursts. If the artillery had made 
some breaks, they might, in their impetuosity to keep 
up with the rest of the line, try to pick their way. 
What young soldiers can accomplish in this respect 
is past all comprehension by elders who try to follow 
in their steps. The first wonder is how they were 
able to go through at all, and the second is how they 
had any flesh on their leg-bones after they had gone 
through. Their main reliance was on the hand wire- 
cutters, which had not been improved since Cuba and 
South Africa. 

All the while that the soldier was snipping the 
strands and bending them back as he crawled for- 
ward, he was usually too near the trench to have any 
protection from the barrage, while from the trench 
he was a full-size target at short range. War offers 
no more diabolical suspense than to this prostrate 
soldier in his patient groveling effort, when machine- 
gun fire is turned in his direction. He is in the posi- 



WE BREAK THROUGH 89 

tion of a man lashed to a bulls-eye. Bullets sing as 
they cut strands of wire around him. He feels a 
moist warm spot on his leg or arm and knows that 
he is hit. Perhaps he tries to apply the dressing to 
the wound; but more likely he refuses to expose him- 
self by any movement which will attract the gunner's 
attention. He may be hit again and again before the 
inevitable final bullet brings the last of his ghastly 
counted seconds of existence. The bones of men 
who were killed in this way — " hung up " in the wire 
— are all along the wire of the old trench line from 
Switzerland to Flanders. Or perhaps, when that 
patient wire-cutter has taken death for granted, the 
machine-gun suddenly diverts its spray to other tar- 
gets, and he is safe. 

Such was the nature of the barrier of entangle- 
ments which had to be conquered by these young 
divisions of ours before they ever began fighting. 
Beyond its fiendish and elaborate skeins was a trench 
system equally elaborate in all its appointments for 
the real resistance. German officers and soldiers in 
occupation had taken all the interest in improve- 
ments, and the more as it concerned the safety of 
their own skins, of the most fastidiously scientific 
and progressive superintendent of a manufacturing 
plant. The latest wrinkles in the development of 
defensive warfare were promptly applied. After 
each trench raid or enemy attack, weak points that 



9 o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had appeared were corrected. Generals who came 
on inspection ordered changes suggested by their 
study of the ground. Regiments new to a sector 
brought fresh ideas and industry. Work was good 
for German soldiers, who were kept digging and 
building for four years in perfecting the security of 
these intricate human warrens. 

Any trench system, after allowing for an enemy's 
success in clearing the hurdle of the wire and in 
penetrating the trench system, and even for his suc- 
cessful occupation of considerable stretches of the 
front line, relied upon " strong points " and second 
lines in the maze of fortifications to make the gains 
futile, or only the prelude to a more costly repulse 
than if the attack had failed in its first stage. Let 
it be repeated that not one out of four of our soldiers 
had ever before stormed a first-class fortified line. 
They and their officers knew the character of its 
mazes only through lectures, pictures, maps, and 
imagination; but they were perfectly certain of one 
thing, and that was that their business was to clean 
the Germans out, and for this they were equipped 
with proper tools. In other words, when you saw a 
German emerging from a deep dugout where he had 
taken refuge from the bombardment, or appearing 
round a traverse, either kill him or gather him in. 

The ardor and ferocity of our youth in a furious 
offensive mood was never more compelling in its 



WE BREAK THROUGH 91 

results. Caution was not in our lexicon. If strong 
points held out, the thing was to go through them. 
There was no time to lose. The first wave must go 
on according to schedule, leaving those who followed 
to do the mopping up of details. Our faith was in 
our valor and destiny. In our progress the first-line 
fortifications were to be only another hurdle after 
the wire. 

In the course of this famous day, in seeking a 
personal glimpse of every aspect of the action, I was 
at Army, Corps, and Division Headquarters as the 
news came in, and I was three miles beyond the 
trenches with our advance against the machine-gun 
nests. Such a morning sun as is rare in this region 
eventually dissipated the thick mist which had been 
in our favor in concealing our attack from enemy 
observation, and against us in preventing our obser- 
vation of the movement of our own units. It kept 
on shining, which was still more rare, in all the 
genial pervading warmth which we associate with its 
generous habit in this season at home, until midday 
found the air singularly luminous — luminous for this 
region — and the sky a soft blue. The generals could 
not have asked more; and to the medical corps it 
meant a blessing for the wounded. Judging by the 
weather that ensued during the remainder of the 
battle,, the point that the sun of the Argonne ex- 
hausted all its beneficence on the first day and had to 



92 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

retire behind clouds to recuperate, in order to keep 
up the reputation of " sunny France " for future 
tourist seasons, seems well taken. 

Not only was the infantry advancing, but all the 
rest of the army, no longer obliged to court conceal- 
ment under the cover of the night, had come ag- 
gressively into the open, the stealthy processes of 
preparation having given place to the thrill of battle 
joined. Where all efforts on preceding days had 
been directed toward a stationary theater, now all 
were directed to a traveling theater. A mighty 
organism of human and metal machinery, which had 
been assembling and tuning up its engines, had 
thrown in the clutch and was in motion. 

Considering the volume of shells being fired at 
the Germans, the columns of motor-trucks loaded 
with ammunition now had an intimate appeal. The 
front had become a magnet drawing every thought 
toward it, with every waiting ambulance and vehicle 
expectant of an order to start forward. At the rear 
there was less traffic on the roads than during the 
period of preparation; but forward, close to the 
trench lines, roads that had been empty two days 
before were crowded. Machine-gun battalions in 
reserve and batteries of artillery which had carried 
out their assignment in the preliminary bombard- 
ment, and were moving forward to new positions 
where they could support the advance, were demand- 



WE BREAK THROUGH 93 

ing right of way over divisional transport, which was 
clear as to its duty' to keep as close to the infantry 
as orders would permit. The signal corps, unroll- 
ing their wires, also wanted precedence in order that 
division headquarters might have information; and 
the engineers had taken precedence over everybody 
with the compelling argument that unless roads were 
built no traffic could move forward. 

It was a familiar enough picture. To the jaded 
observer of war every glimpse only reproduced some 
scene which was part of a routine of which he was 
so weary that it made him desire, if for no other 
reason, the realization of the supreme hope that this 
should be the final offensive of the war. The great 
thing, though all the equipment and all the system 
seemed age-old because of their associations, was 
that the personnel was new. A new knight had 
slipped into old armor, and taken up the sword from 
a tired if experienced hand. D'Artagnan had ar- 
rived from Gascony to add his young blade to the 
blades of the three Musketeers. On the part of 
everybody there was still the boyish enthusiasm of 
the beginner in a game. 

Hundreds of officers who had been to staff schools, 
or enduring the S. O. S. in fractious impatience, now 
for the first time were at the front — the front of the 
Great War; and with them were all the men of the 
supply units, motor drivers, ambulance drivers, engi- 



94 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

neer battalions, military police, whose one thought 
was a sight of that " big show." 

The French gunners looked on smiling, as a 
middle-aged woman smiles over the enthusiasm of 
the debutante. Given the hour of attack, they knew 
by experience how long it would be before the first 
wounded and the first prisoners would come down 
the road. Soldiers who had never seen a German at 
close quarters perhaps had taken the prisoners; a 
young intelligence officer might be having his first 
experience in questioning them. To the French the 
prisoners looked like all the " sales Boches " ; but 
we were discovering their characteristics afresh. 
Later came the severely wounded on stretchers 
which were slipped into the ambulances which bore 
them away. By nine o'clock in the morning we knew 
that except for a few strong points which could 
not hold out we were through the wire and through 
that elaborate trench system and out in the open, 
and still going on. 



VII 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 

A successful surprise — The importance of traffic control in main- 
taining the advance — The " show " in the air — How the engi- 
neers built roads — And traffic blocked them — And colonels 
showed the traffic police how. 

The veteran accepts his long service as a guarantee 
of efficiency; the novice is patient under instruction 
and open to suggestion. Our desire to do every- 
thing in the book, our painstaking individual industry 
under a meticulous discipline, and our willingness 
as beginners to learn had served us well before the 
battle in the concealment of our strength and plans 
from the enemy. There were so many of us and 
we were so swift in our onset that we gave the enemy 
the benumbing shock which on many occasions the 
newcomer, springing aggressively into the arena, has 
inflicted by a rain of blows upon a hardened adver- 
sary who has appraised him too lightly. 

If the Germans had made the most of their for- 
tifications with their customary skill, the dam might 
have held against the flood; for it is the touch and 
go of impulse that decides in the space of a second 
between docile hands up begging for succor and a 

95 



96 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

fury of resistance to the death. Suddenly brought 
to face overwhelming formations, the answering 
sense of self-preservation prevailed in the German 
trenches before the German officers and non-com- 
missioned officers, had they been in the mood, could 
overcome the mass instinct of their men. 

The French on our left had presumably met more 
resistance than we in the first-line fortifications. 
Their attack was doubtless more professionally 
skillful than ours. Had they failed, for no other 
reason than that they had fewer men to the mile, 
the cost of a repulse would have been less for them 
than it would have been for us. The Germans knew 
that the French were massing west of the Argonne, 
and apparently accepted their attack as serious, while 
they thought that we would make only a demonstra- 
tion. We had been right in our anticipation that 
they would not consider, for one thing, another 
major offensive by our army feasible so soon after 
Saint-Mihiel; or, for another, that Marshal Foch, 
while he was carrying on extensive operations in 
northern France, would have the temerity or the 
forces to undertake in addition such an extensive 
effort as that of September 26th. 

Despite the honor in which open warfare was now 
held, a first line was still a first line, with its wire, 
deep dugouts and strong points, and all the ap- 
proaches accurately plotted by the artillery through 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 97 

long practice in fire. A part of it might be readily 
taken at any time by thorough artillery preparation, 
but the victors in the early offensives had suffered 
enormous toll of casualties from shell-fire in organ- 
izing their new positions. Though the short artil- 
lery preparation, without registering, had proved 
efficacious against the Germans on July 18th and 
August 8th, when they were holding shallow trenches 
in ground which they had won in their spring offen- 
sives, it had not as yet been tried by the Allies — I 
may mention again — over any such length of front 
against the old trench system as in the Meuse- 
Argonne. It is only fair to say that we were not 
opposed in strong force, but, make any qualifica- 
tion you choose, by conquering twenty miles of first- 
line fortifications we had won a signal triumph which 
must have been a distressing augury to the German 
command. 

After our " break through " there was little 
answering artillery fire. We had drawn the teeth 
of immediate artillery resistance by going through 
to the guns. We had captured many guns; others 
were forced to fall back to escape capture, and they, 
or any that were hurried forward, would have had 
to fire, not at a settled trench line, but at infantry 
deployed and on the move. Meanwhile our infantry 
must be driven to the utmost of its capacity to make 
the most of the headway that we had gained. 



98 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

We had also to consider the dispersion and the 
fatigue which bring loss of momentum in an attack, 
just as a tidal wave spends itself in flowing inland. 
The farther our infantrymen went, the farther our 
transport must go to provide them with rations and 
ammunition. Thus the ability of our organization 
to continue the advance after the " break through " 
included the indispensable factor of efficient arrange- 
ments at the rear. As a division has twenty-seven 
thousand men, its daily food requirements are equal 
to those of a good-sized town, without including 
small arms and artillery ammunition and other ma- 
terial. People at home who were surprised at the 
length of time it took a division to march by on 
parade, without its artillery or transport, will have 
some idea of the road space required for a single 
division fully equipped for action and in motion. 

Behind the old trench system traffic movement 
had settled into a routine, under the direction of 
policemen at the crossings, resembling that of a 
city. In our mobilization for the attack we had 
brought, aside from corps and army troops, nine 
divisions into the Meuse-Argonne sector. This led 
to the pressure which would appear in suddenly 
trebling the traffic of a city. Though the roads were 
insufficient, they were kept systematically in repair; 
quantities were known; we were forming up on a 
definite line of front. After the attack was begun, 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 99 

the defensive force was falling back upon its estab- 
lished and dependable arrangements The offensive 
force — and this cannot be too clearly or vividly 
stated — had to build a city, as it were, by establish- 
ing new depots and camps, repairing old roads and 
building new roads, while traffic control in the area 
of advance was subject not only to the calculable 
requirements of a great street parade in a city, but 
to the incalculable requirements of a great fire and 
other emergencies which switch concentrations from 
one street to another. 

From a ridge in the midst of the old trench system 
in the center of our line, the nature of our task ap- 
peared as a picture, which my observation in thread- 
ing my way through the streams of traffic in the rear 
filled in with detail. Ahead, except for occasional 
groups and lines appearing and disappearing in the 
wooded, undulating landscape, our advancing in- 
fantry seemed to have been dissipated into the earth. 
Their part after they were through the fortifications 
I shall describe in another chapter. The bridge be- 
tween them and the rear was for the moment in 
the air, where Allied and German planes in prodigal 
numbers came and went on their errands of combat 
and observation. In the jam on the roads back of 
the trenches, thousands of men, of waiting machine- 
gun battalions and of stalled artillery, and drivers 
and helpers attached to traffic of all kinds, were 



ioo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

looking aloft at a " show " which was worth the 
price of being packed in darkened transports, and 
almost worth the price of enduring army discipline. 

If they might see nothing of the battle going on 
behind the ridge, they had grandstand seats for the 
theatrics of war in the air, staged on the background 
of the blue ceiling of heaven. I was not to see the 
like of this scene again in such bright sunlight. The 
most jaded veteran never failed to look up at the 
sound of machine-gun firing, which signaled that the 
aces might be jousting overhead. Would one be 
brought down? There might be only an exchange 
of bullets between planes in passing; then one might 
turn to give chase to the other; or both begin 
maneuvering for advantage. In shimmering flashes 
the sunlight caught the turning wings of planes that 
tumbled in a " falling leaf " when at a disadvantage, 
caught the wings of planes that were crippled and 
falling to their death. 

Duels were forgotten when a German plane with 
no Allied plane across its path swept down toward 
the huge inflated prey of an observation balloon. 
His telephone told the observer in the basket that it 
was time to take to his parachute. The sight of the 
figure of a man, harnessed to a huge umbrella, 
leisurely descending from a height of a thousand 
feet, divided attention with watching to see whether 
or not the gas within the thin envelope overhead 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 101 

broke into a great ball of flame. If not, it was 
brought down to take on its passenger again; and 
it could be lowered with incredible rapidity for such 
an immense object, as the wire which anchored it 
was reeled in on the spinning reel on the motor- 
truck. There was something very modern and truly 
American about a motor-truck in a column of traffic 
towing a balloon. 

Most fortunate of all the spectators were the men 
with machine-guns for aerial defense mounted on 
trucks. They both observed and participated in the 
game. Many of them were in action for the first 
time with a new toy. They did not propose to miss 
any opportunity to make up for having come late 
into the war. 

" Haven't you learned the difference between an 
Allied and a German plane? You're shooting at an 
Allied plane," an officer called to a machine-gHnner. 

" Yes, sir," was the reply, and he stopped 
firing. 

" Why didn't you tell him you couldn't hit it any- 
way? " remarked a passing wounded man, after the 
officer had passed on. " But don't worry. If they 
miss the plane, the bullets can still hit somebody 
when they fall." 

Entranced as they were by the spectacle, all the 
men who had to do with the moving of the wheels 
of all the varieties of transport which overflowed 



102 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the roads were only the more eager to press for- 
ward. The air was not their business. Their duty- 
was over the ridge toward the front. The artiller- 
ists had particularly appealing reasons for impa- 
tience, as we shall see. They were using rugged 
language, which relieved their steam-pressure with- 
out changing the fact, which was being burned into 
the consciousness of the whole army, that as surely 
as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, a 
road is no stronger than any slough which holds up 
traffic. 

The engineers had no time to spare for observing 
blazing balloons. Their labors in the old trench 
system, in contrast to the florid drama of the air, 
were a reminder of how completely earth-tied the 
army was, and how small a part of its effort was 
above the earth, even in the days when communiques 
paid much attention to aces. For a mile or more 
every road in the immediate rear of the old French 
trenches had been in disuse for four years while it 
was being torn by shell-bursts. For the distance 
across No Man's Land, it had become part of the 
sea of shell-craters. On the German side of No 
Man's Land were more trench chasms, and another 
stretch which had been blasted in the same fashion 
as the French side. 

Shoveling would fill many of the holes ; but shovel- 
ing required labor when we were short of labor, 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 103 

and time when every minute was precious. It was 
increasingly evident every minute, too, that trucks 
that carry three tons, and six-inch mortars, and 
heavy caissons were not meant to pass over any 
piece of mended road that had its bottom two or 
three feet below the surface. They insisted upon 
finding the bottom and remaining there until pulled 
out by other traction than their own. ' 

The division engineers were supposed to keep ori 
the heels of the infantry, which they did with a gal- 
lantry which made amends for the inadequacy of 
their numbers and material. Their efficacy was de- 
pendent upon these two features and upon the pre- 
vision of the division command in mastering the 
problem beforehand. There were critics who said 
that some division staffs evidently expected their 
artillery and rolling kitchens to take wing; but the 
division staffs produced by way of answer the un- 
failing list of written orders on the subject, which, 
could not be carried out. If the infantry were re- 
pulsed or checked, the engineers might share some 
of the fighting, as they had on more than one oc- 
casion. There seemed to be a universal apprehen- 
sion, the engineers said, that an engineer might have! 
a chance to sleep or rest, which would obviously ruin] 
his morale. If, after the infantry had passed on,; 
the enemy concentrated the fire of a battery on trie 
road-builders, they were not supposed to be diverted 



104 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

from their labor, but to be prompt in filling new 
shell-craters. 

j The lack of material ready on wagons for im- 
mediate movement to the front left them to gather 
what material they could on the spot. They could 
hot use barbed wire, and in places that seemed the 
only thing in sight. They tore out trench timbers, 
which often proved rotten from four years in moist 
£arth, they gathered stones where stones could be 
found and used these to make something more solid 
than loose earth turned by the shovel; and they 
sent hurry calls to the rear for trucks of material, 
which themselves might be stalled on the way for- 
ward in the jam of waiting traffic. The more 
sticks and stones filled in a bad spot, the more were 
needed as the earth underneath continued to yield. 
When a truck-driver saw that the truck in front, 
which belonged to his convoy, had passed through 
a rut, he determined that where his leader could go 
he could follow, and he drove ahead, cylinders roar- 
ing with all their horse-power. When he was stuck, 
he spurred them to another effort. Meanwhile his 
wheels were probably sinking, and he had delayed 
the mending of the break in any satisfactory way 
while the truck in front backed up to put out a tow- 
line, and all hands in the neighborhood added their 
muscular man-power to cylinder horse-power. The 
Germans had raised in the shell-torn earth of the 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 105 

trench system another barrier than that of their 
fortifications to a swift drive for their lines of com- 
munication. 

Their own limited opportunities in " passing the 
buck" did not exclude the engineers from easing 
their own mental, if not physical, burden by remark- 
ing with acid intensity that a little better traffic con- 
trol on the part of some of the people who were 
complaining would help matters. No one who had 
been along the roads could deny that this point was 
well taken. If not the experience, of other offen- 
sives, our traffic- demoralization at Saint-Mihiel 
should have been a warning to us, though most of 
the men who had learned their lessons in that sector 
were still occupied there. We had the admirable 
example of the British transport, which, after con- 
fusion in the Somme battle resembling ours at Saint- 
Mihiel, had developed in practice under fire a system 
which seemed automatic. 

The number of guns and ammunition-caissons and 
the length of a column of divisional transport were 
calculable quantities. Their order of precedence be- 
hind the infantry was largely a settled formula. 
The number of roads and their state of repair must 
be known not only on the map but by practical ob- 
servation. Some were narrow country roads, which 
would accommodate only " one-way " traffic, and 
others would accommodate traffic going both ways. 



106 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Having all these factors in mind, the program 
must include the disposition of labor battalions 
where they would be needed in making prompt re- 
pairs, when heavy trucks cut up roads, especially 
one-way dirt country roads. 

We had written out extensive instructions for 
traffic regulation, which were to be enforced by 
military police who were new to the task and insuf- 
ficient in numbers. The same thing happened to the 
military police on September 26th as happened to 
the New York City police during the parade of the 
27th Division, when the crowd broke through the 
police lines into the line of march. In this instance, 
when aggressive commanders of artillery and con- 
voys saw an opening, they made for it without 
regard to traffic regulations, though their ardor may 
have meant only delay in the end. 

Thus the military police had paper authority 
which they could not enforce. Their minds were 
kept in confusion by the confusion of personal direc- 
tions they received from volunteer experts. They 
were overwhelmed in rank; and respect for rank had 
been drilled and drilled into them. A colonel is a 
colonel and a mighty man; a lieutenant-colonel is 
a mightier man than a major, who in turn outranks 
any captain in charge of a section of road. What 
was the use of proclaiming a road " one-way," when 
a staff officer appeared and declared it " two-way"? 



IN THE WAKE OF THE INFANTRY 107 

What was there to do when another staff officer ap- 
peared with an outburst against the disobedience of 
regulations that had interlocked traffic going both 
ways on this same one-way road? 

This is not saying that the personal initiative of 
a passing senior officer was not serviceable, when he 
confined his effort to breaking a jam, without re- 
organizing the system in one locality, and thereby 
throwing it out of gear in other localities. With 
the best of intentions, colonels fresh from home who 
had not seen a large operation before were particu- 
larly energetic. Some of their remarks stirred 
memories of Philippine days when the transport of 
an expeditionary battalion was in difficulties. The 
burden of the world was on their shoulders. When 
they gave an order, they wanted no suggestive " But, 
sir — : — " from any captain or major, though they 
complained that reserve officers lacked both initia- 
tive and discipline. As each colonel departed in 
the blissful consciousness that it had taken a trained 
soldier to " straighten things out," the traffic of- 
ficers, in the interval before another appeared with 
contradictory orders, might indulge their sense of 
humor with the reflection that numerous " fool 
colonels " must be wandering about France with a 
free hand in impressing their rank upon juniors. 

The biggest " fool colonel " or general was he 
who, to avoid walking, took his car in the early part 



108 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of the day across the freshly made road over the 
trench system, thereby delaying the carts of machine- 
gun battalions. When his car was stalled, he re- 
ceived about as much sympathy as the driver of a 
truck stalled on a road which did not belong to his 
division. Not being a colonel, the driver might be 
made the public object of language which did not 
consider rank or human sensibilities. 

In no result was the fact more evident than in 
our traffic direction that in making a large army we 
must crack the mold of a small army. In time our 
capacity for organization would make a new mold. 
Meanwhile, though it might be applied at cross- 
purposes, our American energy, adaptable, tireless, 
furious, and determined, must bring results. The 
many broken-down trucks in ditches beside the road 
were only the inevitable casualties of a prodigious 
effort. Let the infantrymen keep on advancing; we 
would force their supplies up to them in one way or 
another. 



VIII 



THE FIRST DAY 



Out in the open — The enemy limited to passive defense — And 
relying on machine-gunners — Their elusiveness — Problems of 
the offense — Slowing down — Up with the infantry — Why 
dispersion — Liaison up, down, and across — How keep the staff 
informed? — The spent wave before Montfaucon. 

What of the infantry lost to view in the folds of the 
landscape? They were confronting the originals of 
the hills, woods, and ravines, whose contours on 
paper had been the definite factor in making plans, 
while the character and resistance of the enemy had 
been the indefinite and ungovernable quantity. As 
the day advanced, irregular pencilings, reflecting the 
reports of the progress of the fighters, moved for- 
ward on the maps of the different headquarters 
toward the heavy regular lines of the objectives 
which were the goals of our high ambition. 

The loss of the first-line fortifications to the Ger- 
mans could not be considered as serious as in an 
offensive in the first years of the war. Even as early 
as the Verdun battle, proponents of the mobile 
school of warfare, who had never been altogether 
silenced by the engineering school, had advocated a 
yielding elastic defense, which, after drawing the 

109 



no OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Crown Prince's Armies away from their depots, 
would counter by a sudden attack of the gathered 
French forces; but such a maneuver was too daring 
and contrary to the thought of the time, with its de- 
pendence upon rigid defense. Infantry had fallen 
into the habit of feeling " undressed " and helpless 
unless in trenches. When the soldier was forced into 
the open, he had hastened to hide his " nakedness " 
in a shell-crater, or instantly, in the very rodent in- 
stinct that he had developed, set to digging himself 
a pit. Since the German offensive of March, 191 8, 
all the practice had been to wean the infantry away 
from settled defenses to the supple use of light 
artillery, trench mortars, and machine-gun units. 
Happily, as we know, the basic training of our in- 
fantry had been in keeping with this idea. 

In the palmy days of German numbers and vigor, 
the German High Command might have met our 
Meuse-Argonne offensive by the prompt marshaling 
of reserves for a decisive counter-attack against our 
extended forces with inadequate roads at their backs ; 
but if Ludendorff realized the errors which our fresh 
troops might commit from inexperience, we realized, 
on our part, that he was too occupied elsewhere by 
Allied attacks to consider any considerable aggres- 
sive action on our new front, where his tactics must 
have in mind, obviously, the protection with a mini- 
mum cost of men and material of his lines of com- 



THE FIRST DAY in 

munication, in order to assure a successful with- 
drawal from northern France and Belgium. With 
our attack developed, his subordinate in the Meuse- 
Argonne sector, in carrying out this policy, would 
choose the points where he could gain the best 
results by concentrating the fire of the artillery at 
his command, and then depend upon the expert Ger- 
man machine-gunners for defensive warfare in the 
open, supported by such fragmentary defense lines 
as might be hastily constructed. 

According to the German intelligence report of 
our operation at Saint-Mihiel, our staff work had 
been immature, while our line officers did not know 
how to make the most of our gains. Without con- 
sidering that at Saint-Mihiel we were under orders 
to stop on our limited objectives, and granting the 
Germans their view, no one will deny them the 
credit of knowing how to make the most of their 
tactical opportunities. The bellows of our accor- 
deon was being drawn out as theirs was drawn in. 
With every hundred yards of advance our men were 
farther from their communications. Reports were 
accordingly the longer in reaching headquarters, and 
orders for future moves the longer in reaching the 
line, while those of the Germans, as they fell back 
on their communications, were prompt. 

It was not the first time that they had lost first- 
line fortifications. They knew by experience as well 



ii2 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

as observation what had happened to their first line 
under the powerful initial assault; and they knew 
what they had to do, in full dependence upon a staff 
system trained in practice to meet this as well as the 
other vicissitudes of war. The failure of their men 
in the front line to stand to the death was an irritat- 
ing exhibition of deteriorating morale, which must 
be taken into consideration not only by the subor- 
dinate but the higher commands. Scattered and 
demoralized individuals and groups, filtering back in 
retreat, might be re-formed, or passed through ad- 
vancing reserves to the rear for reorganization. 
Fresh machine-gun units, which had almost the 
mobility of infantry, could be readily placed at 
points already foreseen as most suitable. One 
machine-gun might hold up the advance of a com- 
pany of infantry. The enemy was fully familiar 
with the details of a landscape studded with ideal 
machine-gun positions, the choicest being the edge 
of a woods on a hillside overlooking an open 
space. 

Some of our officers and men had met German 
machine-gun practice in open warfare in the Chateau- 
Thierry campaign and at the British front. As 
others knew it only under the limitations of trench 
warfare, the resistance which they now must face 
was familiar to them only through instruction. The 
German machine-gunner, having learned as the sur- 



THE FIRST DAY 113 

vivor of many battles the art of self-preservation at 
his adversary's expense, would wait all day and all 
night and even longer without a shot, until his target 
appeared in the field of fire assigned to him; wait as 
a Kentucky feudsman waits behind a rock for his 
enemy to appear on a road. Each gun was only one 
in a well-plotted array covering all the avenues of 
approach which any attacking force must follow. 
The guns disposed in front might precede or wait on 
the guns in flank in opening fire. 

There was nothing new or wonderful in this ar- 
rangement. Any soldier with a sense of ground and 
of natural combative strategy could work out a plan 
of interlocking fire; but the discipline and the train- 
ing requisite to its proper execution, and the stubborn 
phlegmatic bravery which sticks to a machine-gun to 
the death, are not to be found at random on any 
page of a city directory or social register. The 
fact that a gun had begun firing did not mean that 
it could be immediately located. Sometimes when 
light conditions were right the flash was visible, un- 
less the gunner had hung a piece of bagging, through 
which he could aim, to conceal the flash. The direc- 
tion of the fire might be judged somewhat by sound, 
and also by observing the spits of dust in the earth 
or on the wall of a building. Judgment on this score 
was affected by the proximity of the passing bullets 
to the observer's person. 



ii 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The more machine-guns were firing from different 
angles, the more difficult it was to locate any one of 
them by either method; and the more influential the 
human element. In the midst of their fire imagina- 
tion easily multiplied the number of guns, which is 
one of the moral effects of their use. When a gun 
was located, the gunner might slip back behind the 
crest of a ridge, or he might have moved as a pre- 
caution, before he was located, to another position 
which had been chosen as his next berth, with pit and 
camouflage in readiness. 

An experienced aviator — always there is that 
word " experience " which has no substitute — might 
detect a machine-gun nest if he flew low; but not as 
a rule in woods or in bushes, or even in the open 
when covered with green branches. There were 
many machine-gunners and relatively few aviators. 
If a gunner thought that an aviator who flew low 
had seen him, he might have taken up a new posi- 
tion before the aviator's information had brought 
down artillery fire. The machine-gunner was a 
will-of-the-wisp with a hornet's sting, which could 
be thrown a mile and a half. Usually the price of 
locating him was casualties to the infantry, and still 
more casualties before he was taken, if he stood his 
ground. If the Germans had not enough machine- 
guns back of their first line for a complete inter- 
locking defense on the first day of the battle — and 



THE FIRST DAY 115 

they certainly had later — they aimed to place them 
where they could do the most good. 

Naturally the American Army, studying its chess- 
board, had taken into consideration the counter- 
moves of the enemy which would result from its 
attack. Of course the passage through the entangle- 
ments would lead to the first dislocations of liaison; 
the storming of the trenches to more; and the pas- 
sage over the shell-craters to still more. After every 
offensive against the trench system, officers had stud- 
ied how to avoid the slowing down of the attack 
after the first line was taken. This had led to pass- 
ing the first wave promptly through the trenches and 
leaving a second wave to " mop up " by " breach- 
ing " dugouts and cleaning up points of resistance ; 
and then to the system of " leap-frogging," in which, 
when the men in front had been weakened in num- 
bers by casualties and lost their aggressive cohesion, 
fresh troops went through them to carry forward 
the attack. Reserves in passing through the lanes of 
the barbed wire and over the trenches and on to 
catch up with an advancing line also suffered from 
disorganization, which might be increased by strong 
concentrations of enemy shell and machine-gun fire. 

A division commander had discretion as to how he 
would gain his objectives, which brings us into the 
field of tactical direction, as technical as it is vital to 
success. His dispositions were a test of his knowl- 



■i 1 6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

edge of his profession, and his handling of the di- 
vision after it was engaged of his qualities of gen- 
eralship. In some instances villages and strong 
points were passed by the main line of advance, and 
left to be conquered by special attacking forces. In- 
structions had not only to be elaborate but prac- 
tical. 

Those captains and lieutenants, the company and 
platoon commanders, who were carrying out the 
instructions, must each be a general in his own 
limited field. The less experience his seniors had 
in preparing practical instructions, the more he 
might suffer for his want of experience in leading 
men in battle. With the conquered trenches behind 
him, he had to make sure that his men were in hand, 
and if he had been allowed no time for reorganiza- 
tion behind his shield, that was an error; for bar- 
rages might move too fast, in expressing the desire 
of commanders for speed. At the same time, the line 
officer had to identify by the map the ground on his 
front which he was to traverse and the positions he 
was to take as his part in that twenty miles of puls- 
ing, weaving, and thrusting line. 

When you are seated before a table in calm sur- 
roundings, trying to follow the course of one com- 
pany in an advance, you realize the limitations of 
your i to 20,000 map. It ought to be 1 to 10. 
More elements than any layman could imagine en- 



THE FIRST DAY 117 

tered into the problem of the location of the com- 
mand post from which a battalion commander was 
to direct the movements of one thousand men, or a 
regimental commander of three thousand, in action. 
All this, of course, represents sheer fundamentals in 
thoroughgoing military science; but we must have 
the fundamentals if we are to appreciate the accom- 
plishment of our young army in the Meuse-Argonne 
battle. 

A prominent hill was easily recognized. If a 
village were in the line of your attack, that was a 
simple guide; but in a region where, unlike our 
country of scattered farmhouses, the farmers all live 
in villages, there was a paucity of buildings which 
might serve as landmarks. One of our men ex- 
pressed the character of the terrain by saying that 
with every advance it all looked alike — hills, ridges, 
woods, and ravines; yet when you came close to the 
part which you were to attack it seemed " different 
from any other and a lot worse." We had to cross 
brooks and swamps as an incident to conquering the 
other features of the landscape. If we missed any 
kind of fighting on the first day of the battle, it was 
in store for us in the later stages. 

Oh, that word liaison! That linking up of the 
units of the attack in proper coordination ! Is there 
any man of the combat divisions who does not know 
its meaning or who wants to hear it again? It never 



n8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

came into slang at home in the same way as camou- 
flage; but it is a thousand times more suggestive of 
the actualities of war. Liaison between the French 
and the American armies, between corps, divisions, 
brigades, regiments, battalions, companies, platoons, 
squads, and individual soldiers. Liaison between in- 
fantry and artillery and trench mortars and planes 
and tanks ! If you did not have it, why, the adjoin- 
ing commander might be as much to blame as you, 
at least, and you could say that he was altogether 
to blame. It may be said that the history of the 
war will be written in terms of positions taken, and 
of positions which were not taken because cooperat- 
ing units failed to keep their liaison. They were not 
up. When I mention that there were difficulties of 
liaison in writing of any division, I am not saying 
who was at fault, as no one person was, perhaps, 
more than another. 

Other generals might be promoted and demoted, 
but General Liaison remained the supreme tactician. 
" Establishing liaison " was fraught with more heart- 
aches and brain-aches than any other military detail. 
Men prowled through the night in gas-masks under 
sniping rifle and machine-gun fire and artillery fire, 
to ascertain if the unit supposed to be on their flank 
was there: perhaps to receive a greeting from an 
officer hugging a fox-hole, " Why aren't you fellows 
keeping up with us? " 



THE FIRST DAY 119 

Liaison was most difficult in woods, though the 

fighting was not necessarily always the severest 

there. Men naturally took to the paths instantly 

they advanced into woods, and these, if they were 

not stopped by machine-gun fire, advanced ahead of 

those in the deep underbrush. A stretch of unseen 

wire might arrest a part of the line, without the men 

in liaison on the right and left, as they plunged 

through the thickets, knowing that it had been 

stopped. The sheer business of keeping any 

kind of formation was distracting enough, without 

the sudden bursts of machine-gun fire, which might 

be so powerful that there was nothing to do except 

,to take cover and consider a plan for silencing or 

capturing the gun. Unless the casualties were so 

serious that it was suicidal not to halt and mark out 

a plan for capturing the nest, and as advancing was 

a sure way of locating machine-guns and a prompt 

way of overwhelming them, we swept on in the 

spirit of our instructions and impatience. Captured 

imachine-guns littered the paths of our battalions, in 

i tribute to the effect of our impetuous rush upon 

l.gunners who continued to forget their orders to 

[stand to the death when they saw the tidal wave of 

jour soldiers about to swamp them. 

As the day wore on and the enemy began to re- 
cover from the shock of the surprise of our initial 
onset, we encountered an increasing volume and fury 



120 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of machine-gun fire from hill to hill across valleys, 
sweeping down ravines, plunging from crests and by- 
indirect aim over crests, from village houses and 
from both directions where village streets crossed. 
At critical points it was supported by concentrations 
of shell-fire. Along that road, at the edge of this 
patch of woods, along that stretch of river bottom, 
the German's artillery laid down barrages over a 
space already swept by bullets, to hold positions by 
which he set as much store in his plans as we in 
ours. 

"Why aren't you getting on?" division com- 
manders asked, or tried to ask — as communication 
did not always permit the message to arrive 
promptly — when the pencilings on the map were not 
keeping up to the schedule of progress toward the 
objectives. It was an easy question; the answer 
might be in the lack of resolution of a regimental or 
battalion commander, in the character of the resist- 
ance to his troops, or in their disorganization under 
new and severe trials. After further ineffectual ef- 
forts the battalion and regimental commanders 
might say that progress was impossible without 
reserves. 

Should the division commander send them? Ex- 
pending his reserves on the first day of a long battle 
might place him in a dangerous position in face of 
a later and graver emergency; but he had the word 



THE FIRST DAY 121 

of a subordinate that they were necessary. Had 
that subordinate in his first serious engagement be- 
come too readily discouraged? What was the ex- 
tent of his losses? They were a criterion for judg- 
ing his balance of assets for continuing the attacks, 
though they did not include the exhaustion of the 
men, their mood of the moment, or the disruption 
of liaison of their units. 

The division commander might sit rigid with the 
front of Jove, which he thought was the chief item 
of the military formula, and say: "I want no ex- 
cuses. Take the position ! " Or he might keep on 
pressing in his reserves, in the determination that 
his division would be up on time; for Corps Head- 
quarters were depending on him. The pencilings 
moving toward the corps objective were his record 
in the battle. If the pencilings were in a V-shape, 
that was bad. It meant that some of his elements 
were in a salient, in danger of being " squeezed." 

Sometimes the pencilings were farther advanced 
than the troops. The wish being father to the 
thought, observers who saw a charge entering a 
woods took it for granted that it would go through 
the woods. Aviators sometimes mistook German 
soldiers in movement for our own; again they mis- 
read the maps, and placed our troops on a ridge 
ahead of their actual position. Company leaders 
might make the same mistake. The incentive to 



122 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

" get there " involved eagerness to send back word 
that you were arriving. A little group of gallant 
men who pushed through a wood or gained a crest 
might have been swept back by machine-gun fire by 
the time their proud report had reached division 
headquarters. Instead of having commanding 
ground as a " jumping-off place " for the next stage 
of advance, they might be hugging the reverse slope, 
exposed to fire from three sides immediately they 
showed themselves. 

Regular as well as reserve officers who had never 
before been in action were to prove again that no 
amount of study of the theory of war, invaluable as 
it is, may teach a man how to keep his head in 
handling a thousand or three thousand men under 
fire. West Point cadet drill, Philippine jungle and 
" paddy " dikes, Leavenworth staff school, army 
post routine, and border service had no precedent of 
experience for the problems of maneuver which they 
now had to solve. It was all very well to say that 
the men were all right; but another thing was keep- 
ing your men together. I saw a regular colonel 
violating, in a singular reaction to amateurishness, 
the simplest principle of organization — the same 
that keeps subordinates informed of the location of 
a business superior — by having no post of command 
where he or an adjutant could be found with orders 
or reports. Some colonels remained steadily at their 



THE FIRST DAY 123 

headquarters, without absenting themselves for per- 
sonal inspection in any emergency; others moved 
restlessly about the field, trying to apply to three 
thousand men the personal direction of a platoon 
commander. Every subordinate who witnessed such 
an exhibition by a superior was bound to lose confi- 
dence in the command. I am not thinking of a lack 
of physical bravery when I say that there were 
instances of colonels and brigadiers voicing pessi- 
mism in the presence of subordinates. They might 
have become good judges or good philosophers, but 
they were not meant by nature, at least in their lack 
of battle experience, to drive home an ambitious of- 
fensive movement. Others had too much blind 
initiative; they were the kind that would drive head 
downward at a stone wall. Others were amazingly 
cool, determined, and efficient. These the men 
would follow against any odds. 

Being human, our men who symbolized the pencil- 
ings on the map had muscles and nerves which were 
subject to fatigue. They had no visualization of 
their goals. If they could have been shown a flag 
on a mountainside, which they must reach before 
they " knocked off " for the day, the incentive for 
keeping on would have been more directly applied. 
All they saw was the slope or woods ahead of them. 
Their knowledge of the battle plan was limited to 
their orders to keep on going. After nights when 



i2 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

suspense and suppressed excitement had allowed 
them little sleep, they had been going all day from 
5.30 in the morning — going through barbed wire 
and trenches, over uneven ground, as they fought 
their way not only under fire but under the strain of 
that wearing mental concentration of trying to re- 
member and apply all they had learned in their 
training and in previous actions. 

Physically, the task set for our troops had seemed 
almost superhuman. Many had taken enough steps 
to cover in a straight line twice the distance they 
had traveled. To the eye of a hurrying observer, 
these myriad figures, whether dashing toward a 
machine-gun nest, or ducking to avoid an outburst of 
fire, or coming wounded across the fields, had the 
attraction of the ardor and fearlessness of youth in 
battle, while they brought many thoughts which were 
as far from the battlefield as the homes that had 
sent them forth. 

We might say " check! " to the Germans if we 
had taken Montfaucon at the end of the first day. 
Montfaucon was the highest point on our way to 
the Lille-Metz railway except the Buzancy heights. 
It was visible from the old first-line trench system 
at Malancourt and from the Mort Homme on 
the banks of the Meuse, and it looked forward 
over the ground of the projected second day's 
advance. 



THE FIRST DAY 125 

It happened that I knew by travel that day how 
far it was from Headquarters to the front line. I 
might feel as well as appreciate the reasons of the 
officer and the soldier for disappointing Head- 
quarters when I came to the end of my journey, 
where the tidal wave, expending itself, had left a 
platoon of infantry, without touch with the units on 
their right and left, washed up in a sunken road on 
the reverse slope of a hill in front of Montfaucon. 
On the bare crest of the hill lay the bodies of com' 
rades who had fallen when the watchful German 
machine-gunners aimed at the human targets appear- 
ing in bold silhouette on the sky-line. It would have 
been madness for a handful of men without support 
to continue on against such blasts of cross-fire. They 
had fallen back, bringing their wounded, to await 
orders. Apart from the opposition they had met, 
the irregular landscape over which they had ad- 
vanced was sufficient explanation of their inability 
to keep their liaison. It made islands of the hills 
as it diverted the tidal wave into the channels of the 
ravines. Scattered American soldiers were moving 
about the neighborhood like hunters, beating up 
Germans who had taken cover among bushes and in 
holes. 

There was a recess in the battle in the vicinity, 
with stretches of several seconds when the country- 
side seemed quite peaceful. Then for another 



126 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

quarter of a minute, only a single machine-gun might 
be firing with deliberately precise intervals between 
shots. Suddenly the whole pack broke into full cry 
at the sight of quarry on the ridge which forms the 
southwestern approach to the town from the Mont- 
faucon woods. We must have this ridge before we 
took the town. As I looked in this direction, I saw 
a line of our men appearing above the crest, each 
figure sharp against the light blue sky. Their inter- 
vals seemed at first as exact as the teeth of a comb; 
then the teeth began to drop out as figures fell. For 
a few seconds longer the survivors strove against 
the blasts before they drew back and faced right and 
moved along under cover of the slope, apparently 
seeking a less exposed portion of the crest for an- 
other attempt. 

The machine-gun fire died down into spiteful ir- 
regularity until the line wheeled again toward the 
crest. Their heads were hardly above it when, with 
the unity of an orchestra answering the conductor's 
baton, the diabolical thirring rattle began again with 
all its previous volume. Evidently quite as many 
guns had this portion of the ridge under their fire 
as the other. This time the men did not persist. 
In proper tactical wisdom they disappeared from the 
sky-line as quickly as a woodchuck dodges into his 
hole. 

We had now definitely developed the strength of 



THE FIRST DAY 127 

the enemy at this point. Possibly we had located 
some of his machine-guns. At least, a battalion 
commander had learned enough to realize that he 
must undertake a deliberate method adapted to the 
situation for silencing them, which of course meant 
delay in pushing forward toward the day's objec- 
tive the pencilings in one small section of the Head- 
quarters map. Yet it was such details as this, re- 
vealed to me in a pantomime of vivid and stark 
simplicity and brevity, which taken together made 
the whole for that abstraction to the soldier which 
is called the High Command. 

"Is Montfaucon taken?" was the question of 
Headquarters when I arrived there in the evening. 
Some reports indicated that it was. This part of 
the line was the most extended, and its communi- 
cations accordingly the most uncertain. There were 
other pencilings on the map which also had to be 
erased. If we had not gained all our objectives, this 
was not saying that we had not been astonishingly 
successful. Having, as it were, set out ambitiously 
to take the whole solar system between dawn and 
darkness, one of the planets still held out, with the 
fixed star of Buzancy heights in the distance. 

There might be many small salients, but none of 
threatening importance in our new line. Despite the 
uneven battle experience of our divisions, all had 
done their part magnificently. Our gains were more 



128 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

than a mile on our flank to four miles in the center, 
where we had made the bulge toward the summit 
of the whale-back. How far had we expended our 
momentum in our initial onset? What was the 
traffic situation? What of the morrow? 



IX 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 

The call goes back for artillery — And at night for the rolling 
kitchens — The staff interferes with sleep — Our part meant no 
stopping — Keeping at the roads during the night — Montfaucon 
on the second day — Then drive for the whale-back — Enemy 
resistance holds our exhaustion — Settling down in the rain to 
slow progress. 

Moving on their feet, with each man's course his 
road through the trench system and across the coun- 
try beyond, the infantrymen, as they hourly in- 
creased their distance ahead of the part of the army 
moving on wheels, were calling oftener for artillery 
than for reserves. They needed shells to destroy 
machine-gun nests, to silence enemy batteries, and 
to make barrages to support their farther advance 
as resistance began to develop. There were equally 
urgent appeals for machine-gun battalions to meet 
the German machine-gun opposition in kind. Their 
spray of bullets, in indirect fire over the heads of 
the men in a charge, was another form of shield, 
the more desired when the protection of the artil- 
lery was lacking. 

The machine-gunners, who called themselves the 
11 Suicide Club," were soldiers both of the wheel 

129 



i 3 o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

and the foot. Their light carts did not have to wait 
on the stout passageway over the trench system 
which even the light artillery required. Yet some 
of them had been marooned, to their inexpressible 
disgust; for it was their part in an emergency to 
press on to the firing line through the shell-fire which 
may sweep the roads back of the infantry. The 
place of the artillery was as near the actual front 
as orders and traffic jams would permit. 

How the artillery chafed on the leash 1 Not only 
duty but the gunner's promised land was beyond 
the barrier of the trench system which stayed his 
progress. Open warfare called to him from the 
free sweep of the landscape. The seventy-fives had 
come into their own again as mobile living units 
which would unlimber in the fields close behind the 
moving infantry, instead of playing the part of coast 
artillery behind fortifications. There would be no 
need to bother about camouflage. They would move 
about so rapidly that the enemy could not locate 
them; or if he did — well, that was all in the game. 
Their protection and the protection of the infantry 
would be in the blasts overwhelming the enemy's 
fire. 

11 Why in " the infantry was calling to the 

artillery. " Why in ■" the artillery was calling 

to the engineers. You may fill out the blank space 
of this cry of mutually dependent units with the kind 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 131 

of language which was not supposed to be, but 
sometimes was, used in the presence of chaplains. 
The infantry changed the object of their impatience 
when night stopped them wherever the end of that 
long day's work found them. They were not think- 
ing of supporting artillery fire for the moment. The 
late September air was chill, the ground where they 
lay was cold. Their appetites were prodigious from 
their hard marching and fighting. Their hearts and 
thought were in their stomachs. Wasn't it the busi- 
ness of rolling kitchens to furnish them warm meals? 

It was past supper-time. Where in were 

those rolling kitchens? After dark they surely need 
not be held back in apprehension of being seen by 
the enemy's artillery. 

Night had laid its supreme camouflage over all 
the area of operations. Under its mantle an activity 
as intense as that of the day must continue for all 
who supported the infantry. We might take an 
account of stock. Regimental, battalion, and com- 
pany officers might move about freely along the 
front in familiarizing themselves with the situations 
of their commands. Liaison which had been broken 
between different units must be re-established. The 
ground ahead must be scouted. Platoons and com- 
panies which had become mixed with their neigh- 
bors, and individual men who had strayed from 
their units, must be sorted out and returned. Gaps 



i 3 2 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

in the line must be filled; groups that had become 
"bunched" must be deployed; groups whose initia- 
tive had carried them forward to exposed points 
might have to be temporarily withdrawn, — all by 
feeling their way in the darkness. The sound of 
machine-gun fire broke the silence at intervals as the 
watchful enemy detected our movements. A shad- 
owy approaching figure, who the men hoped was the 
welcome bearer of that warm meal from the roll- 
ing kitchens, might turn out to be an officer who 
directed that they stumble about in woods and 
ravines to some other point, or creep forward in 
the clammy dew-moist grass with a view to improv- 
ing our " tactical dispositions," which does not 
always improve the human dispositions of those 
who have to carry out the orders. 

Army Headquarters wanted information from 
the three Corps Headquarters. Each Corps wanted 
information from its three Division Headquarters, 
which in turn were not modest in asking questions 
of the weary fellows at the front. Exactly where 
was your line? What was the morale of the men? 
Were they receiving ammunition and food? When 
would the guns be up? What identifications of the 
enemy forces in your sector? Had many machine- 
gun nests been located? Was the enemy fortifying, 
and where? What was the character of his shell- 
iire? The high command had to consider the 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 133 

corps summaries of the answers in relation to its 
own news from other sources, communications from 
the French staff, reports from Army aviation and 
artillery, conjectures of the enemy's strength and 
probable intentions, and the general situation of 
transport in the Army area and the flow of supplies 
from the rear. 

The lack of information on some points was no 
more puzzling than the abundance of contradictory 
information on others. Staff heads must work into 
the small hours of the morning. They might rest 
after they had arranged their program for the 
morrow. The men at the front who were to carry 
it out were supposed to rest at night to refresh them- 
selves for another effort at dawn. This was a kindly 
paternal thought, but how, even in the period of 
daylight saving, they were to find the time for sleep 
in the midst of re-forming their line and answering 
all those questions was not indicated. Whether they 
slept or not, whether their shields and food were 
up or not, they were supposed to fight from dawn 
to dusk on the 27th. 

Our army, though our situation perhaps war- 
ranted it, might not dig in along the new line and 
hold fast while it recuperated after that long first 
day. Other double doors from Verdun to the sea 
were about to be swung open; other armies must 
be considered. Indeed the decision in this respect 



i 3 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

was not with our army. In a sense it was not with 
Marshal Foch, for the forces which he had set in 
motion to carry out his great plan had already pre- 
scribed our part, as we know. On September 28th 
the Franco-Belgians were to attack in Flanders, and 
Mangin's army was to move on Malmaison; on the 
29th the Anglo-French armies, including our Second 
Corps, were to storm the Hindenburg line in the 
Cambrai-St.-Quentin sector ; on September 30th 
Berthelot was to free Rheims from the west ; and on 
October 3rd, Gouraud, with our 2nd Division, was 
to storm the old trench system east of Rheims. We 
must hold off reserves from their fronts. The more 
determined were our attacks, the more ground we 
gained on the way to the Lille-Metz railroad in this 
critical stage of Allied strategy, the more perturbed 
would be the enemy's councils in adjusting his com- 
binations to deal with the other offensives. Though 
it might have been better for us to have taken two 
or three days in which to gather and reorganize 
deliberately our forces for another powerful rush 
which would have been a corresponding shock to the 
enemy, this was no more in the psychology than in 
the calculations of the moment. We were winning; 
we meant to keep up the winning spirit of our 
army. What we had done one day we should do 
the next. We and not the Germans must take pos- 
session of the commanding position of Montfaucon 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 135 

as the first great step in gaining the heights of the 
whale-back, should their resistance require delay in 
reaching our goal. 

Leaving the account of each Corps' and division's 
part in its sector to future chapters, I shall conclude 
this chapter with the results of the fighting of our 
army as a whole for the succeeding days to October 
1st, when we were to realize that Saint-Mihiel was 
the quick victory of a field maneuver compared to 
the realism of war at its worst in the Meuse- 
Argonne. When night fell on the 27th, our trans- 
port direction appreciated still more pregnantly the 
limitations of our roads for our deep concentrations. 
Each road, where it passed over the old chasms of 
the trenches, — where the rats now had the dugouts 
to themselves, and the silence of a deserted village 
prevailed except for the rumble of the struggling 
trucks over the new causeways — was pumping the 
blood from the veins of the by-roads to the rear, 
through its over-worked valves, into the spreading 
arterial system of the by-roads in the field of ad- 
vance. Once on the other side, the drivers felt the 
relief of a man extricated from the pressure of a 
crowd at a gate, who finds himself in the open. 
Lights being forbidden, night was less of a blessing 
and more of a handicap to the transport than to the 
infantry. The argument that it secured the roads 
from observation, which might mean artillery con- 



136 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

centrations, had little appeal to the average army 
chauffeur. He was not worried about shell-fire. If 
he had not been under it before, he was curious to 
know what it was like. 

Darkness only made road repairs more onerous 
and slow. The engineers could not see to gather 
material or where to place it to do the most good. 
Unexpected difficulties appeared in the midst of the 
shadows of men and vehicles. The most calculating 
of staff heads, who wished to neglect no detail in 
his instructions, had not suggested that anyone con- 
nected with artillery, signals, or transport should 
sleep until he had overtaken the infantry, except as 
drivers might take cat-naps between the fitful pul- 
sations of traffic. Men at the rear who were mere 
passengers waiting on others to clear the way felt 
a certain disloyalty if they slept in the face of the 
hurry call from the front. 

The partisanship of the spectators " pulling " for 
the home team is a faint comparison with the par- 
tisanship of war, with comrades asking for more 
than your cheers. The cry of " Come on ! Take 
hold here! " in the darkness would instantly awaken 
any man, nodding in his seat on a caisson or truck, 
into welcome action. Now he had a chance really 
to help, instead of exercising telepathic pressure on 
the Germans. He ceased to feel that he was a 
slacker. Shoulders to the wheel with the last ounce 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 137 

of your strength! Timbers taken out of dugouts, 
stones dug out of the earth with bare hands to be 
filled into sloughs ! Break a way, make a way, — 
but " get there! " 

As a people, when we want something done in a 
hurry, we are no more inclined to count the cost 
than to stint our efforts. Ditched trucks and caissons 
were the casualties of the charge of our transport, 
which was no less furious in spirit than that of our 
infantry. Moving a broken-down truck off the road 
of course meant delay for the trucks behind it; and 
it meant, too, that someone at the front would be 
asking in vain for the supplies that it carried. But 
that pitcher of milk was spilled; on to the market 
with other pitchers. 

Anyone who thought that the going would be easy 
or troubles cease on the other side of the old trench 
system was soon disillusioned. The Germans had 
blown up some roads as well as bridges. Our own 
shells in the preliminary bombardment had made 
shell-craters and dropped trees as obstacles. We 
must not forget that for four years there had been 
a belt three or four miles wide beyond the old 
trench system from which any but army life had 
been excluded. No roads had been kept up except 
those which served a military purpose. The Ger- 
mans, partly because of their rubber famine, had 
depended largely on light railways rather than 



138 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

motor-trucks for sending up supplies. Where they 
did not use a main road, it was of no interest to 
them how far it had fallen into disrepair. Maps 
did not take bad spots into account, and aerial scout- 
ing did not reveal them. 

Dirt country roads had been utterly neglected. 
We must use them all to meet the demands of our 
immense force. Our heavy trucks and artillery 
wheels soon cut them with deep ruts. When the 
engineers were not on hand, each battery and convoy 
negotiated a passage for itself and left those in the 
rear to do the same. Freshets had washed out some 
sections, and undermined others. Embankments had 
fallen away into swamps, where a side-slipping 
truck would sink in up to its hubs. If shoulders to 
the wheel failed when artillery striking across fields 
ran into ditches and holes, snatch ropes were used. 

Each convoy must locate the unit which it was 
serving. The rolling kitchens that had worked 
their way forward could not deliver their warm 
meals until they had found the impatiently ravenous 
troops. Artillery commanders must grope about for 
their assigned positions, or wait until they were 
assigned positions. They must have their ammuni- 
tion as well as guns up. Officers bearing instruc- 
tions from the staff were as puzzled as the recipient 
about their meaning, # as they studied the map by 
the discreet flash of an electric torch, and sought to 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 139 

identify landmarks shrouded in the thick night mist 
under the canopy of darkness. Lightly wounded 
men moved counter to the streams of traffic and of 
reserves, who might also be uncertain of their exact 
destination. Men with bad wounds in the body 
tottered across the fields and dropped by the road- 
side. Others who could not move must be found 
and brought in by searchers. 

It was not surprising that some of our leaders had 
not yet learned to apply in the stress of action and 
the conflict of reports the principle that when com- 
mitted to one plan it is better to go through with it 
than to create confusion by inaugurating another 
which may seem better. Half-executed orders were 
countermanded and changed and then changed 
again; and this led to trucks trying to turn round 
in the narrow roads, and to eddies in that confused 
scene of the hectic striving of each man and unit to 
do his part. The effect suggested a premature 
dress rehearsal of a play on a stage without lights, 
while the stage -hands were short of sets and the 
actors were still dependent upon reading their parts. 

When morning came, few rolling kitchens indeed 
had reached the objective of the men's stomachs 
with their cargo. Our heavy artillery was still 
struggling in the rear. Only a portion of our light 
artillery was up. Where our troops were fresh on 
the first day, they were now already tired. The 



140 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Germans had made the most of the night. Their 
reserves which had arrived included the 5th Guard 
Division, already on the way when we began the 
battle. We needed our heavy artillery to pound 
roads and villages, and to counter artillery which 
the Germans had brought into action. Against the 
increase of German machine-guns we needed the 
rolling barrages of our light artillery even more 
than on the first day after we were through the 
trench system. Renewing the attack over the full 
length of our twenty miles of front, we were to 
advance with our moving shields irregularly dis- 
tributed and vulnerable in most places. Any ob- 
server could see soon after daylight, in the wide- 
spread puffs of German shells on the landscape, that 
the inevitable had happened, as in all previous offen- 
sives. The enemy artillery had other targets than 
our infantry; he was laying a barrier to the infan- 
try's support on the roads, halting the columns of* 
traffic, forcing reserves to cover, and making new 
shell-holes in the roads to be filled by the transport 
and engineer workers. 

The important thing on the second day was to 
take Montfaucon. On the ridges west of the town 
the German infantry, artillery, and machine-gunners 
were utilizing the positions which he had laid out 
months before the attack. He fought stubbornly 
here as in Cuisy Wood and on the hills on the 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 141 

left; but buffeted as they were, our men, under firm 
orders to keep on attacking, conquered both sys- 
tems. This cracked the shell of the Montfaucon 
defenses. Before noon we were in the town. 

There are those who say that if we had taken 
Montfaucon on the first day, we might have reached 
the crest of the whale-back itself on the second or 
third day, and looked down on the apron sweeping 
toward the Lille-Metz railway. I fear that they 
belong to the school of " ifs," which may write 
military history in endless and self-entertaining con- 
jecture. They forget the lack of road repairs; the 
lack of shields to continue the advance; and the 
interdictory shell-fire which the enemy laid down on 
the ruins of the town and on the arterial roads which 
center there. If we had taken Montfaucon on the 
first day, I think that there would still have been 
a number of other " ifs " between us and the crest. 
Of course, once we possessed Montfaucon and its 
adjoining heights, the enemy's infantry was not 
going to resist in down-hill fighting, though he 
harassed us with artillery and machine-gun fire as 
we descended the irregular slopes of the valleys 
beyond. 

Our ambition was soaring for a decisive success 
on the 28th. We had been delayed a day, but we 
should yet carry through our daring programme. 
Forced optimism saw our field artillery coming up, 



1 42 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

our roads improving, our transport somewhat more 
systematized, and tried to forget other factors; but 
the fatigue of all hands was greater; the vitality of 
our troops was weakening for want of proper food. 
Our heavy artillery, and indeed some of our light 
artillery, was still struggling in the rear. Our artil- 
lery ammunition supply was insufficient to feed the 
guns all the shells they would need when dawn 
proved that the Germans had brought up still 
more artillery on the second night. There were the 
heights of the whale-back before us, with the first 
great step in their conquest behind us. Attack was 
the thing, attack from the Forest's edge to the 
Meuse. The more time we gave the enemy, the 
more time he would have to fortify and bring up 
reserves. Necessity accepted no excuses from 
subordinate commanders. Drive, and again drive; 
keep moving; the enemy would eventually yield. He 
must yield. Once we broke his resistance, then the 
going would be swift and easy against his shattered 
units. 

The 28th was a critical day: the day when it was 
to be decided whether or not we were to fight a 
siege operation, or to carry the whale-back in a 
series of rapidly succeeding rushes, — though I think 
that the decision really came with the signs of devel- 
oping resistance on the morning of the 27th. 

Our divisions put in their fresh reserves; they 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 143 

would admit no word of discouragement. Artillery- 
men who had been at work for two nights and two 
days tried to bring their guns close up to the infan- 
try. All the remaining tanks were called into 
service. With the forced burst of energy which may 
be mistaken for " second wind," we everywhere 
made gains. Our right had moved along the Meuse 
to south of Brieulles, which with the bend of the 
river westward narrowed our front. On the left 
we had reached Exermont ravine. On the 29th we 
tried for Brieulles; for Gesnes; for the ravine; and 
for the escarpments of the Forest, points which the 
attack of the third day had developed as the locked 
doors which we must smash through to give us pur- 
chase for another general attack. There was a cer- 
tain fifulness in these efforts, as of a fire dying down 
blown into a spitful flame. In the trough of the 
Aire we were under the raging artillery fire from 
the heights on either side; and in the trough of the 
Meuse from the heights across the river and from 
the whale-back, which I shall describe in later chap- 
ters. In the valleys beyond Montfaucon and the 
neighboring heights we faced the first slopes of the 
whale-back, which were the covering positions for 
the Kriemhilde and Freya Stellungen, new trench 
systems utilizing all the natural strength of the 
heights as a main line of defense by an aroused 
enemy in strong force. 



i 4 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Our army might now take counsel of necessity, if 
not of prudence. In the future we must hack and 
stab our way. Meanwhile we must have rest for 
the tired troops, or we must have fresh troops, be- 
fore another considerable offensive effort. A hun- 
dred millions of population at home did not mean 
that we had unlimited trained man-power to draw 
on in France. Our divisional reserves were ex- 
hausted. Replacements were not arriving in suffi- 
cient numbers to fill gaps from casualties and sick- 
ness. We were not only fighting from the Meuse 
to the Argonne and holding the line of our new 
front at Saint-Mihiel, but we had four excellent 
fresh divisions just going into attack in British and 
French offensives, not to mention our divisions in 
tranquil sectors. If we had had more men for the 
front, we could not have fed them. If we had made 
a farther advance, we could not have kept our 
artillery and transport up with the troops. We 
needed more motor-trucks, horses, and every kind 
of equipment for that insatiable maw. If we had 
had more transport, we should hardly have had 
room for it. The arterial road facilities over the 
old trench system were as yet unequal to caring for 
the number of our troops. The bottle necks could 
not meet the demands of the bottle. Our appetite 
for victory had exceeded our digestion. 

Army reports which spoke of u poor visibility " 



THE ATTACK SLOWS DOWN 145 

referred to the morale of the men as " excellent." 
There was no question of the " poor visibility " or 
of the morale of men who were well enough to be 
in line, for they were always ready to fight. The 
chill October rains had begun. We could expect 
little more fair weather. When, already, one 
needed a heavy blanket over him in bed, our men 
sent into action, for mobility's sake, without blankets 
were shivering at night on the wet ground, not under 
the roof of the stars but in the penetrating cold 
mist which hugged the earth when it was not rain- 
ing. This and the lack of proper food and of 
sleep brought on diarrhea, and the pitiful sight on 
the roads of the sick and gassed was a reminder of 
how quickly war may wreck the delicate human 
machine which takes so long to build. In a few days 
sturdy youth with springy steps in the pink of 
health had become pale and emaciated, looking ten 
years older as they dragged their feet in painful 
slowness. 

Some divisions had suffered more exhaustion than 
others. All their reserves had been crowded in to 
meet an emergency. They had given to the limit 
of their strength in a few days, while others might 
spread theirs over weeks. At close quarters with 
the enemy we dug in, with machine-gun nests and 
defensive lines of our own to repulse his counter- 
attacks, while the message of our own piecemeal at- 



i 4 6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tacks, by which we sought to maintain our personal 
mastery over him, was: "We are only gathering 
our strength. This is our battle. We are coming 
at you again — soon." Thus established in our 
gains, in temporary stalemate, we might withdraw 
some divisions for rest. This meant fewer mouths 
to feed, lessening the strain on our transport. 
Other divisions had rest by the alternate with- 
drawal of regiments and brigades. 



X 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 

Two weeks of reconnaissance by the 33rd on the right — Surprising 
the enemy by charging through a swamp — Careful planning 
gives complete success by noon — Nothing more but build a 
road and wait — Two belts of woods in front of the 80th — 
The enemy must hold at the second belt — Which he does with 
enfilade artillery, gas, and a counter-attack from Brieulles — 
More artillery support necessary before the defenses of the 
town, beyond the belts, could be taken — The 4th does its first 
bit in workmanlike fashion — But cannot get beyond the foot 
of the whale-back without its stalled artillery — The Corps 
digs in as it can and waits. 

By the right flank, left flank, and center! Every 
action, whether fought by a thousand or a million 
men, resolves itself into these simple elements of 
strategic control, which is as old as war. In our 
Meuse-Argonne drive the right and left flanks 
elbowed their way down the two river valleys to 
the conquest of the approaches on either side of the 
heights of the whale-back, which the center was at- 
tacking in front. To think in these terms is to think 
in Corps; and to think in Corps is to think in divi- 
sions. 

On the right of Bullard's Third Corps in the 
trough of the Meuse was the 33rd Division, Illinois 
National Guard. It was the first American division 

147 



i 4 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

to arrive on the Meuse-Argonne line, taking Sep- 
tember 7th-9th from a French division the sector 
which our whole Third Corps was later to occupy. 
A single American division assigned to such a broad 
front of quiet trenches would not arouse the enemy's 
suspicions that we were planning a major offensive. 
On the contrary, it might be an excellent mask for 
our battle preparations. 

Thus the 33rd had two weeks of actual trench 
occupation in which to familiarize itself with the 
enemy positions. These resourceful Illinois men, 
who had seen much and learned much in having 
already served with a British, an Australian, a 
French, and an American Corps, were just the kind 
to make the most of their advantage, being naturally 
of an inquiring mind and not timid, though shrewd, 
in their methods of inquiry. Before the attack, in 
making room for the other two divisions of the 
Corps in their stealthy approach, they were side- 
slipped to the right, where they faced the river bot- 
toms of the Meuse. At their back was the scarred 
slope of the Mort Homme, and in their sight were 
the other famous hills of the Verdun battle. 

The mission of the 33rd was as picturesque and 
appealing as its surroundings. As the hinge of the 
whole movement, on the pivot of the river bank, it 
was to swing round in a half circle until its front 
was secured on the Meuse, at a right angle to the 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 149 

German front line on the opposite bank. This was 
to be accomplished by noon, after which the 33rd 
had only to dig in and hold fast. My reference 
elsewhere to the difficulty of maneuvering troops 
even in face of no opposition particularly applies to 
this sweeping right wheel. There was the Forges 
brook, as well as the trench systems to cross. On 
the right of the line was the Forges Wood, and on 
the left was the Jure Wood, which gave cover for 
machine-guns, if they were not overcome, to play a 
flanking fire on the center. Forges Wood was the 
real problem. Its machine-gun nests were protected 
by formidable defenses where the Germans thought 
them necessary. At other points they depended 
upon morasses which they thought impassable; and 
they knew the river bottoms thoroughly as their 
avenue of advance in their repeated attacks for the 
mastery of the Mort Homme in the Verdun battle. 
However, the inquiring Illinois men made their own 
investigations most thoroughly, if covertly, without 
accepting the reputation of German thoroughness as 
a guarantee that there were no openings. 

As a result they not only disagreed with the Ger- 
man view, but took counsel of their conviction in 
strategy which was to lull the enemy in his own con- 
viction of his security and of their amateurishness. 
They had time to work out the plan by thorough 
instruction in every detail. In the first stage of the 



150 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

advance they had to descend a steep slope and cross 
the Forges brook. There they were to halt on a 
road on the other side of No Man's Land, to form 
up for the final act any units that had been delayed 
or become mixed. Being an accurate, card-index 
kind of division, the 33rd's records show that the 
road was reached in fifty-seven minutes, and that at 
the end of twenty minutes every man was in his 
place according to schedule. 

With the left regiment swinging past the Forges 
Wood, this might have exposed its flank, if the ac- 
tion of the right had not been properly timed; for 
everything depended upon each unit carrying out its 
part in the team-work punctually. Charging up to 
their hips in slime and up to their necks in water, 
•the Illinois men proved that the swamps were 
not impassable. They took duckboards from the 
trenches and threw them over the stretches of 
barbed wire which protected the Wood where the 
swamps did not. Just as the defenders of the Wood 
were turning their machine-guns on the targets on 
their flanks, the right regiment " jumped " them in 
front. This gave them an opportunity for to-the- 
death resistance by firing in two directions; but they 
were too confused in the shattering of all their pre- 
conceptions to make use of it in face of those mud- 
plastered Americans springing bolt into their midst. 
They yielded readily. The swinging left had put 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 151 

the Jure Wood behind it, and, with only broken ele- 
ments of the enemy now in its path, the 33rd had its 
whole line on the bank at noon. The right hinge 
of the Army secure, the maneuver had been so beau- 
tifully made and it was such a complete success that 
it attracted less attention than if the division had 
been obliged to endure the very hard fighting which 
skill and foresight had prevented. 

As the booty of its swift combing advance, the 
33rd had taken 1,450 German prisoners, who won- 
dered just what had happened to them and why, 
and seven 6-inch howitzers, two 1 10-millimeter 
guns, twenty pieces of field artillery, not to mention 
some trench mortars, fifty-seven machine-guns, a 
light railway, and a well-stocked engineer depot. 
The 33rd's own loss was 2 officers and 34 men 
killed, and 2 officers and 205 men wounded, and not 
a single man missing. To put it in another way, this 
division with its fondness for figures as the real test 
of military prowess, had captured nearly six Ger- 
mans for every casualty of its own. This was cer- 
tainly waging thrifty and profitable war. 

In the matter of traffic, too, the 33rd with char- 
acteristic self-reliance proceeded to look after itself. 
General Bell, who had a pungent common sense, 
knew his men when he set them to paddling their 
own canoe. When congestion on the Bethincourt 
road, assigned to both the 33rd and the 80th Divi- 



iS2 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

sions, prompted the thought of making a road of his 
own, he did not take up the question with Corps, 
which, as this was not in the original plan, might ask 
the views of Army on the suggestion. A young engi- 
neer might be sent out to make an investigation. He 
-might consider the danger of drawing fire, and other 
factors. Then he might return to Corps for further 
consultation. After this another young engineer 
might be sent out to superintend the construction. 
Before Corps knew anything about it, and in the 
time that procrastinating counsel might have occu- 
pied, the Illinois men, who did not need anyone to 
show them how to build a road while they had 
spades and elbow-grease, had one completed right 
over the Mort Homme. 

With its transport moving in good order and with 
its objectives taken, the 33rd might say, in the lan- 
guage which it had learned in training at the British 
front, " We've finished our job, and we're feeling 
quite comfortable, thank you." Except to put in a 
brigade to relieve the 80th and join up with the 4th 
Division — which was no small exception to the 
brigade — the 33rd had nothing further to do until, 
on the strength of the way it had carried out its 
mission of the 26th, it was ordered to cross the 
Meuse on October 8th in order to stop some of the 
flanking fire from the other bank — which belongs to 
another chapter. 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 153 

Cronkhite's 80th, or " Blue Ridge " National 
Army Division, which was the center division of the 
Third Corps, was also to swing toward the Meuse, 
and had farther to go, though the Meuse bends 
inward toward its line of advance. According to the 
Army plan, the 80th was to have only one day's in- 
tensive fighting and swift advancing. On the night 
of the 26th the narrowing front of attack was to 
11 squeeze " it out. Immediately ahead of them the 
Blue Ridge men had two miles of open hilly coun- 
try, which facilitated maintaining their formations. 
Beyond this was a series of woods forming prac- 
tically a belt, which offered cover at every point for 
machine-gun nests. Better still for the enemy's pur- 
pose in holding up a persistent attack — of the kind 
the Blue Ridge men were under orders to make and 
would make — beyond this, separated by another 
open space, was another belt of woods. When hard 
pressed in the first belt, the enemy could withdraw 
to the second, where his machine-guns would have 
another free field of fire. 

The Blue Ridge men were not abashed by 
hills and woods. They had been brought up among 
hills and woods. After breaking through the 
trench system in a clean sweep, by noon they were 
in the first belt of woods, though they had flanking 
fire from the Jure Wood on their right. They were 
up to schedule no less than the 33rd; but they had 



154 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had only an introduction to what was in store for 
them. With the left of the intrenched 33rd as their 
pivot, they must take the second belt of woods be- 
tween them and the river. On the river bank was 
the town of Brieulles, where they were supposed to 
rest their left when the task was finished. Brieulles 
did not appear to be far away on the map ; but we 
were to be a long time in taking it. 

Fortunately the engineers — who deserve much 
credit for this — had a bridge over the Forges brook 
by nine in the morning for the artillery. This was 
good news to men looking across the open into the 
recesses of that second belt of woods, which ap- 
peared as peaceful from that distance as a patch in 
the Shenandoah valley. In a race against time — 
with the schedule burned into every officer's brain — > 
the 80th could not wait for all the guns to come up. 
In the attack at three in the afternoon the front line 
of the division moved forward with drill-ground 
precision and the confidence of its morning's suc- 
cess. 

Since the 8oth's movement had stopped at noon, 
the enemy had had three hours in which to prepare 
his reception of the charge. In a sense the success 
of the 33rd was a handicap to the 80th that after- 
noon. It aroused the enemy to the gravity of his 
situation along the Meuse. His remnants of units 
retreating before the 33rd were swinging round in 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 155 

front of the 80th; reserves had been hurried across 
the river and from Brieulles. By this time our plan 
was revealed to him along our whole front. The 
loss of more river bank had an important tactical 
relation to his defense of Montfaucon and the cover- 
ing positions of the whale-back, toward which our 
Fifth Corps in the center was advancing rapidly. If 
he could hold his ground from the river bank to 
Cuisy, he might have our center in a salient. His 
determination to hold it blazed out from that soft 
carpet of green in cruel machine-gun fire, raking the 
open spaces. His artillery on the opposite bank of 
the Meuse, as well as on the near bank behind the 
second belt of woods and around Brieulles, opened 
fire immediately our charge developed under its 
observation. Undaunted, the Blue Ridge men 
pressed on across the open toward the machine-gun 
nests in the edge of the second belt, as toward a 
refuge in a storm. They took these, only to find 
that more machine-guns were echelonned in the re- 
cesses of the woods. Gas as well as high-explosive 
shells were falling in the first belt and at points 
where our reserves were concentrated. In openings 
or narrow stretches of the second belt where units 
were able to drive through, they looked out on more 
open spaces under command of machine-guns from 
ridges and thickets, while right and left any unit 
whose courage or opportunity had carried it too far 



156 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

was caught in enfilade by the fire of machine-guns 
which had not been mopped up. 

That night the 80th had its right up with the 
33rd's intrenched left on the river. Its brave accom- 
plishment on the remainder of its front was best 
measured by the powerful resistance it had met. 
The division, which was to have been squeezed out 
by the narrowing front, had to remain in line be- 
cause the front had not been narrowed, after far 
harder fighting than it had anticipated. Transport 
congestion on the road which the 33rd as well as 
the 80th was still using was extreme. If the Blue 
Ridge men could not bring their supplies up by 
wheel they might by hand. Carrying parties brought 
up food and small arms ammunition by fording the 
brook past the stalled trucks. 

There could be no question about the character 
of the next day's fighting. The enemy was serving 
notice of it throughout the night. The 8oth's line 
needed re-forming. Its commander did not mean to 
send his sturdy, willing, lithe men to slaughter in 
the fulness of their youthful energy and ambition. 
They must have artillery protection. Their divi- 
sional artillery, operating with the division for the 
first time, required daylight for going into position 
and mastering its problems of fire in a task which 
was both beyond its strength and complicated, as 
was all the other detail of preparing for the attack, 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 157 

by the terrific enemy artillery fire spread from the 
roads in the rear to the front line. 

The shells from the German field-pieces were 
" small potatoes " compared to the " big fellows " 
that were arriving in increasing numbers. As the 
men listened to the scream of the large calibers and 
studied their bursts, they learned that these were 
coming not only from the front but from both sides. 
Enfilade machine-gun fire is bad enough, but enfilade 
artillery fire is still harder to bear. You may at 
least charge the machine-guns, but you cannot charge 
the distant unseen powers hurling high-explosive 
shells into your flank. 

The Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378, which I 
took pains to describe in a previous chapter, was 
now having its first of many innings at the expense 
of the Third Corps at its feet in the trough of the 
Meuse. This bald height on the other side of the 
river looked across the river bottoms and the rising 
valley walls to the heights of the whale-back. If 
the observers on the Borne de Cornouiller saw a 
target which their guns could not reach, they sig- 
naled its location to the whale-back, which might 
have it in range; and the observers of the whale- 
back were responsively courteous. This accounted 
for the cross artillery fire which for weeks was to 
knife our men of the Third Corps with the wicked- 
ness of assassin's thrusts in the ribs. 



158 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

From Hill 378 the 80th Division's movement of 
troops, guns, and transport in the open was almost 
as visible through powerful glasses as people in the 
streets below from a church steeple. As the 33rd 
was already dug in and could advance no farther 
except by crossing the river, the 80th was convinced 
that it was receiving as a surplus the allotment from 
over the Meuse which otherwise might have been 
sent against the Illinois men. A measure of the 
increase of artillery fire is given in the Third Corps 
report, which estimates that the enemy sent 65,000 
shells into its area on the 27th, compared to 5,000 
on the 26th. Against this long-range fire the 
80th' s divisional artillery was as helpless as against 
falling meteors. The Blue Ridge men must endure 
the deluge with philosophic fatalism. Their own gun- 
ners could only give them barrages, and concentrate 
on machine-gun nests and such field battery positions 
as were located. 

The deadly accuracy of the enemy's artillery fire, 
its wide distribution, blasting holes in the roads, 
loosing on infantry as it deployed, on convoys of 
artillery ammunition, and raking our front-line posi- 
tions, only made it more important that the next 
attack should be well delivered and in force. So it 
was. At one in the afternoon, under the barrage of 
their artillery, trench mortars, and machine-guns 
which they had forced through to the front, the Blue 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 159 

Ridge men, with a dash worthy of the traditions of 
their fathers in the Civil War, gained their objec- 
tives, except on the left, where the 4th Division was 
having troubles of its own of a kind which the 80th 
could fully appreciate. 

Though in the second belt of woods, the 80th was 
not yet to be squeezed out. There was Brieulles to 
be taken yet, and the German reinforcements which 
were rapidly arriving required more attention than 
the other divisions of the Corps could spare from 
their own fronts. The German command decided 
that it was time that these Americans had a taste of 
offensive tactics themselves. Fresh German troops, 
advancing from Brieulles on the third morning, de- 
livered a sharp counter-attack; but the Blue Ridge 
men had no patience with any attempt to drive them 
back from the ground they had won. They were 
of the " sticking " kind, as their forefathers had 
been. It was a joyous business, repulsing that 
counter-attack to the accompaniment of such yells as 
Union soldiers associated with Confederate ferocity. 
It was enlightening, too, in that it showed both them 
and their adversaries what a difference there is be- 
tween charging machine-guns and using them to stop 
a charge. 

This incident of the German counter-attack — and 
the Blue Ridge men made it an incident — was a fillip 
for the defenders as they sprang up for their own 



160 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

attack, which began at 7.15, soon after the Germans 
were in flight. The object was to advance the left 
flank, which had been held up the preceding day, into 
Brieulles. The 8oth's artillery concentrated on 
hills 227 and 281, which commanded the town, and 
the town itself, which is at a sharp bend of the river. 
It happened that the Germans were even more inter- 
ested in holding Brieulles than on the preceding day. 
The low ground around it held a semi-circle of 
machine-gun positions. While the long-range artil- 
lery fire from flanking heights was heavier than 
before on the 8oth's area, German field-guns on the 
other side of the river from Brieulles had the special 
mission of protecting the town. 

From the start the fighting was furious and at 
close quarters. The 80th made some headway in 
the morning, re-formed, and renewed its effort in 
the afternoon. Again and again parties attempted 
to rush the crest of 281, which not only commanded 
the town but was linked up with the town and the 
river bend in the tactical defense of the whale-back, 
which, after the taking of Montfaucon, the Fifth 
Corps was approaching in front. The ground be- 
fore Brieulles was impassable. The valor of tired 
men had done all it could under sniping of machine- 
guns and all calibers of artillery. Before we could 
take Brieulles, we must have more guns and develop 
a better method of approach. In holding it the Ger- 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 161 

mans might find some compensation for the loss of 
an engineer dump, estimated to be worth millions, 
which the 8oth had taken. 

Sent in for one day's fighting, the division had 
fought for three days. Now it was withdrawn ac- 
cording to the original plan; but this did not mean 
that it was to go into rest. It was dog-weary, though 
not exhausted. When a brigade from the 33rd, 
which had been busy fortifying the river bank and 
sending patrols across the river, and generally keep- 
ing its irrepressible hand in, took over the 8oth's 
front, the 8oth's artillery was kept in the sector, one 
infantry regiment remained with the 4th in action, 
and the other three regiments were marched away 
as reserves for the 37th Division, which, after 
throwing in all its strength in conquering the deep 
Montfaucon Wood, was expecting a counter-attack 
by the enemy to recover a position which was 
vital in that area to his defense of the whale- 
back. As we had kept him too busy with our at- 
tacks for the counter-attack to materialize, the 
three regiments of the 80th had only the experience 
of that marching and counter-marching by which 
alarms and changing dispositions wear out shoe- 
leather and patience in the course of a mighty battle. 
The Blue Ridge men had advanced six miles, taking 
850 prisoners and 16 guns, with a loss of 1,064 men 
in killed and wounded, as the introductory part of 



1 62 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the service which they were to perform in the 
Meuse-Argonne. 

As the one regular division in line, the tried 4th, 
on the left of the Third Corps, would hardly be 
given the short end of the stick. There was no 
road in its sector. Once its transport was across 
the trench system, it had to switch back from 
the sector of the neighboring 79th Division to 
its own. This was a handicap characteristic of 
the stern problem of the 4th, which, if it failed, 
would set a bad example for inexperienced 
divisions. 

Being forewarned of what was expected of his 
regulars, General Hines was forearmed in his pre- 
vision. Recognizing the miserable character of the 
Esnes-Malancourt road which the division was to 
use, the engineers of the 4th began work on its im- 
provement early in the evening of the 25th before 
the battle began. In common with the two other 
divisions of the Corps, the 4th had to cross the 
Forges brook. Its left flank, in liaison with the 79th, 
faced the height of Cuisy, which was a flanking 
approach to the Montfaucon heights, and its right 
the practically continuous system of woods which 
joined up with those in front of the 80th. Thus it 
was a link between the swinging movement to the 
Meuse and the main drive, the mission of its left 
being to help force the evacuation of Montfaucon, 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 163 

and of its right to occupy the bank of the Meuse 
from Brieulles north to Sassey. 

The whole command was keyed up to great things 
when with a yell the men went over the top in the 
thick mist on the morning of the 26th. If not regu- 
lar in the old sense, they took pride in being pro- 
fessional in skill, though most of the young officers, 
as in other regular divisions, were from the train- 
ing camps. They did not belong to any part of the 
country. They were not National Guard or Na- 
tional Army, but just fighting soldiers who belonged 
to all America. Discipline was strict in this divi- 
sion. Its spirit of corps was in the conviction of 
its rigid efficiency. With hardly a waver in its 
methodical progress it had reached the Corps objec- 
tive by 12.30. There it dug in, waiting until 5.30 
for the division on its left, which was the keystone 
of the movement, to come up. Then the men rose 
again and went forward without any artillery sup- 
port, only to meet what the divisions right and lejft 
were meeting in the rapidly stiffening German 
machine-gun defense, and to call for shields against 
murderous odds. 

In their road-making across the brook and the 
trench systems the engineers had used 40,000 sand- 
bags. Early in the afternoon they had a passage- 
way which permitted of the slow passage of trans- 
port between intervals of filling in the ruts cut by 



i6 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the heavy trucks; fr't two divisions, in the section 
of the line where the farthest advance was expected, 
were limited to road facilities inadequate for one. 
It can only be said that if it had not been for the 
diligence of the engineers the situation would have 
been even worse. 

The failure of the center to reach Montfaucon 
on the 26th had an intimate concern with the plans 
of the 4th the next day, when the positive orders 
for its capture required that the 4th should attack 
without its artillery, which was still laboring to get 
forward. From 7.30 until darkness, without their 
shields against the increasing artillery and machine- 
gun fire, the men continued their workmanlike ad- 
vance. Didn't they belong to the 4th, which was 
as good as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, Regulars? When 
night came they had behind them the heights around 
Montfaucon. They had gone through Brieulles 
Wood. They were also in the south edge of the 
Fays Wood, but when they tried to dig in there the 
machine-gun and shell-fire was too deadly to be en- 
dured. They had to fall back to the slope of 
295. 

Still their artillery was not up ; still the order was 
to attack; and they attacked the next morning. The 
Germans attacked also; and were held. We were 
now against the strong covering positions on the 
slopes of the summit of the whale-back, where the 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 165 

Germans were organizing their Kriemhilde main 
line of defense. During the remaining days of Sep- 
tember, the 4th cleaned up the Brieulles Wood, 
made itself secure in its defenses, and kept harassing 
the enemy with patrols. On the night of the 28th 
its artillery had arrived, though traffic congestion 
limited its ammunition supply, which it needed in 
great quantities to counter the enemy's artillery fire 
as well as his machine-gun nests. It was in range 
of many of the guns from the east bank of the 
Meuse which were so mercilessly harassing the 
80th, and of course was receiving an immense vol- 
ume of shells from all the heights of the whale- 
back. The division was short of supplies and it 
was tired, but there could be no thought of taking 
it out. It was to remain in line in a tug-of-war with 
the enemy until it took part in the general attack 
of October 4th, being all the while under that raking 
cross artillery fire that made the Corps sector a hell 
night and day. 

Contemptuous in their security, the observers 
from Hill 378, the Borne de Cornouiller, continued 
to exchange notes with the observers on the heights 
of the whale-back, as they looked down on the 
amphitheater, peering for targets into the wrinkles 
of the uneven landscape and soaking the woods 
which we occupied with gas. Our only hope of pro- 
tection was to find ravines deep enough or with 



1 66 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

walls steep enough to enable us to dig pits which 
could not be reached by the plunging fire from three 
directions. These German gunners knew the roads 
which we must take at night in order to move our 
supplies to the front; the villages where our trans- 
port might halt; and the location or probable loca- 
tion of our batteries, while theirs were hidden. If 
we wheeled to attack to the right or left, we received 
shells in the back as well as in front. The first 
day of the battle, when the Corps had fired 80,000 
shells against the Germans' 5,000, became the mock- 
ery of a halcyon past in face of the concentrations 
which now pounded the Corps from sources to which 
we could not respond with anything like equivalent 
power. 

If the men of the Corps who had to endure this 
plunging fire had heard the name of the Borne de 
Cornouiller, they would probably have called it 
u Corned Willy," the sobriquet which naturally 
came to the lips of our soldiers, who eventually 
conquered it on rations of cold corned beef. But 
they knew only that shells were coming from three 
quarters of the compass, while they asked " why in 

" our artillery did not silence the German 

artillery. The answer was that our artillery could 
not, until the Borne de Cornouiller and the whale- 
back were taken, which was not to be for another 
month. The Third Corps was to keep on trying 



BY THE RIGHT FLANK 167 

for that town of Brieulles, while it kept on fighting 
in that wicked river trough, to support the attacks 
in the center. There was no use of growling. The 
thing had to be borne. 



XI 



BY THE LEFT 

German comfort in the Forest retreats — The 77th see-sawing 
through — The 28th plowing down the trough of the Aire — 
Scaling the escarpments of the Chene Tondu and Taille l'Abbe 
— An enemy counter-attack — The 35th pushing four miles down 
the east wall of the Aire — Pushing through an alley to the. 
untenable position of Exermont — Unjust reflections on the per- 
sistence of the 35th. 

On the left flank the First Corps, composed of the 
77th, 28th, and 35th Divisions, was having quite as 
hard fighting as the Third Corps on the right flank. 
The regiment of the 92nd Division (colored), Na- 
tional Army, forming the link with the French on 
the western edge of the Argonne Forest, buffeted in 
its inexperience by the intricacies of attack through 
the maze of trenches, was withdrawn after its initial 
service. It was better that the 77th should take its 
place in meeting the baffling requirements of 
liaison between two Allied armies. 

In the trench system before the Forest, the " Lib- 
erty " men of the 77th met comparatively slight 
resistance, their chief trouble being to maintain the 
uniformity of their advance through the fortifica- 
tions and across the shell-craters, over the tricky 

168 



BY THE LEFT 169 

ground of sharp ridges and gullies littered with 
torn tree-trunks and limbs. The division staff had 
in vain sought opportunities for flanking maneuvers. 
A straight frontal attack must be made. " There's 
the Forest. Go through it! " paraphrases the sim- 
ple orders of the division commander. This put the 
responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the young 
platoon and company commanders. They knew that 
they could depend upon one thing. There was 
nothing but forest ahead of them. They need not 
concern themselves with any open fields, though 
they would have the"ir share of swamps and ravines, 
which would not lessen the difficulty of keeping their 
units in line through the thickets. 

If the French " scalloping " on the left of the 
Forest, and the 28th Division "scalloping" on the 
right of the Forest, did not drive in their protecting 
wedges, a cross-fire would hold the 77th's flanks 
back while its center, driving ahead, would be caught 
between the infantry and machine-gun fire from the 
Germans on either flank. If the French and the 
28th fully succeeded in their mission, then, as we 
already know, all the 77th would have to do would 
be to " mop up " any Germans who failed to with- 
draw in time from the pressure on either side. Ac- 
cording to this plan the 77th was to have an easy 
time. The plan failing to work out, the 77th had 
anything but an easy time. 



i yo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The Forest was held, as it frequently had been, 
I understand, by Landwehr troops. Some of the 
old fellows, who were not sturdy enough for real 
warfare, had spent months and even years there. 
They considered that they had the squatter right of 
occupation to the Argonne. There were theaters, 
rest camps, and well-appointed hospitals, with 
enough verboten signs along the paths to alleviate 
homesickness in a foreign land. Isolated in their 
peaceful solitude, where they could be cool in sum- 
mer and comfortable in winter, they took the interest 
in adding to the comforts of their sylvan surround- 
ings of a city man in his new place in the country. 
Positive artistry was achieved in the camp of the 
German commanding general. The walls of his 
office and sitting-room were wainscoted, with a snug 
ante-room where orderlies might attend and mes- 
sengers might wait. The heating arrangements lit- 
erally afforded hot water at all hours. A spacious 
dining-room was supplied from a commodious 
kitchen. If the French began putting over heavy 
shells, interrupting the German officers at their chess 
game or in reading the Cologne Gazette, it was only 
a few steps to a stairway that led to an electric- 
lighted chamber so deep in the earth that it was 
perfectly safe from a direct hit by the largest 
calibers. 

All the headquarters and camps were under 



BY THE LEFT 171 

canopies of foliage which screened them from aerial 
detection. Battalions come here from the death and 
filth and misery of violent sectors settled down to a 
holiday existence in an environment associated with 
a vacation woods. Of course there was a war in 
progress, but they knew it only through sending out 
detachments to keep watch and maintain the trenches 
in repair. The Landwehr men saw enough shell- 
bursts to say that they had been under fire. Indeed, 
one was occasionally wounded. There was no need 
of trench raids for information in a mutually ac- 
cepted stalemate. To fire more than enough 
shells to keep up the postures of war might 
bring retaliation which would interfere with 
smoking your pipe and drinking your beer at 
leisure. 

After this pacific routine had been long estab- 
lished and so much effort and pains had been spent in 
improvements, appeared these outsiders of the Lib- 
erty Division in the rude haste that they might show 
in a subway station at home. They had no respect 
for the traditional privacy of a gentleman's country 
estate. However, the irritated occupants were no 
passive resistants. They had thought out in precise 
terms how they would defend their fastness against 
any such outrageous lawlessness. They knew every 
road and path, and how to make use of their ideal 
woodland cover. They might not be strong in the 



1 72 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

front line, but as the military men say they were 
*' echelonned deep." 

There was no line of resistance in the first stages 
of the advance, but many successive points of resist- 
ance, ready to receive the invader in turn, punishing 
him severely in his slow progress if he were not 
repulsed. But even they in their chosen positions, 
covering avenues where the foliage was not dense, 
could not see far. This developed close-quarters 
fighting from the start. 

As the Germans had particularly depended upon 
light railways in the Argonne, the roads, except 
transversal ones, had been neglected. This did not 
matter, so far as it concerned bringing up the artil- 
lery. There was no maneuvering artillery in the 
thick woods. Even if there had been, it could not 
get any angle of fire for shells which would burst 
short of their targets against tree-trunks. It was 
exclusively an infantry fight except for the machine- 
guns and the baby soixante-quinze or 37-millimeter 
guns, in which the heads of the Americans bobbed 
through the thickets in search of the hidden heads 
of the defenders. A platoon commander might not 
keep watch of his own men in the maze — let alone 
see what the platoons on his flank were doing. 

On the first day the 77th had practically reached 
its objectives, on the second it was to suffer the same 
loss of momentum as other divisions. The " seal- 



BY THE LEFT 173 

loping " on the edges of the Forest, however 
valorous, could not keep up to schedule. If the 
Forest boundaries had been straight lines on a plain, 
the result might have been different. Liaison over 
the escarpments in the valley of the Aire and the 
hills and ravines on the left became a nightmare. 
Still the orders were " Push ahead!" to battalions 
or companies which were not up. If under this spur 
they advanced beyond their flanks, then the flanks 
were to " push ahead! " Thus in a process of see- 
sawing platoons and companies continued to make 
progress. The units in the middle of the Forest 
saw nothing but trees and underbrush. All the 
world was forest to them. Those who found them- 
selves on the edge looked out on stretches of the 
great battlefield under puffs of shell smoke, and to 
the going and coming of aeroplanes in another 
world, and possibly were forced to seek shelter in 
the Forest by bursts of machine-gun fire to which 
they were exposed from other divisional sectors. 

So it was not surprising that the men of the 77th, 
immersed in the Forest depths, should think that 
they were fighting the whole battle. They knew 
nothing of the " scalloping " tactics. Their horizon 
was confined to a few square yards. To them the 
Argonne had no appeal of a holiday woods. Sylvan 
glades, which the poet might admire, meant stum- 
bling down one side and crawling up the other, with 



i 7 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ears keen for the whipping sound which might 
signify that they were in an ambush. They might not 
stop in for a nap at the rest-camps. They were not 
sleeping in those beautiful wainscoted quarters, but 
on the dank ground in the deep shadow of the trees 
which kept the sunlight from slaking moisture after 
the rains. The rolling kitchens were held up in the 
rear where the trucks cut deep in the saturated 
woodland earth, and hurdled over tree-trunks be- 
tween sloughs, while the Forest made the darkness 
all the more trying as the weary engineers en- 
deavored to hold up their end. 

The infantry continued its valiant and persistent 
see-sawing. On the 29th they made a big swing on 
the right, and on the left took a depot de machines, 
or roundhouse, and the treacherous ravine south of 
Binarville in which it was situated, by hard and auda- 
cious fighting. On the 30th the whole line again 
made progress, against machine-gunners who had 
cunningly prepared paths to give them visibility for 
a greater distance, and to draw the attackers into 
the line of their fire. They charged down the 
slopes of the Charlevaux ravine and its irregular 
branches, across the streams and swamps at their 
bottoms, and up the slopes on the other side — all 
this through woods and thickets, of course. The 
next day an even deeper advance was made over 
very irregular ground, while the right in triumphant 



BY THE LEFT 175 

ardor pressed forward, ahead of the left and center, 
across the Fontaine-aux-Charmes ravine and its 
branches and their streams until it was past the 
heights of the Chene Tondu. As the Chene Tondu 
was not yet wholly in the possession of the division 
on the right, the gallant victors deserved something 
better in their weariness than to be forced to retire 
by overwhelming fire in flank and rear from the 
commanding heights. The night of October 1st 
the "Liberty" men, after six days in which they 
had steadily advanced for a depth of six miles, held 
the line from the Chene Tondu across the Forest to 
a point north of Binarville, its supporting flanks on 
either edge of the Forest in a deadlock. 

There was forest and still more forest ahead of 
the 77th. After it had conquered the Argonne, it 
might have a chance to take the Bourgogne Wood 
beyond on the way to the Lille-Metz railway. After 
this experience the New Yorkers ought not to be 
afraid to go into Central Park after dark when 
they returned home. 

They may have thought that the 28th on their 
right was not keeping up to program, and the 
28th may have thought that they were not; but 
neither had the advantage that I had of seeing the 
other in action during those terrible days. Astride 
the Aire river, having the trough as its very own, 
the 28th put a heart of iron into its first impact, and 



176 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tempered it to steel in its succeeding attacks. The 
" scalloping" process which was its mission looked 
just as simple on a flat map as the swing toward 
the Meuse of the 33rd; but then, everything looked 
simple on the map, and everything for all the divi- 
sions might have been as simple as it looked if it 
had not been for the enemy. He was always inter- 
fering with our staff plans. If the Aire's course 
had been straight, and the valley walls had come 
down symmetrically to the river bottom, the 28th 
would have had straight open fighting, which is a 
satisfaction to brave men whatever the cost. A 
direct frontal attack was as out of the question for 
the Pennsylvanians as it was mandatory for the 
77th. They must exhibit suppleness and cunning, or 
bulldog grit was of no service. 

In full realization that the true defense of the 
Forest was on its flanks, the enemy developed strong 
resistance in front of the 28th on the first day. The 
Perrieres Hill, a bastion in the first line of defense, 
honeycombed with machine-gun emplacements, held 
up the attack on the left as it swept its fire over the 
trench system on either side, covering the steep 
approaches for its capture which were studded with 
shell-craters and festooned with tangles of wire. 
The enemy also set store by the ruins of the town of 
Varennes in the valley, which were to become so 
familiar to all the soldiers who ever passed along 



BY THE LEFT 177 

the Aire road. At Varennes the road crosses the 
river in sight of the surrounding congeries of hills. 
Under cover of the ruins and the river banks the 
Germans had both seventy-sevens and machine-guns, 
which, well-placed as they were, failed of their pur- 
pose. It was now evident that the enemy would 
strive to hold every height on either side of the 
Aire with the object of grinding our attacks between 
the molars of two powerful jaws. 

For the German map plan was as simple as ours. 
It invited our initiative into the open throat of the 
valley and into blind alleys between the heights 
blazing with fire. The 28th was to interfere with 
the German plan just as the Germans were to inter- 
fere with the American. Plans did not seem to 
count. Nothing counted except tactical resource and 
courage in the face of shells which came screaming 
and bullets whistling from crests in sight and crests 
out of sight. Woods fighting was only an incident 
of the problem for the 28th, which took La Forge 
on the edge of Montblainville, only to find that the 
machine-guns in the Bouzon Wood on the west wall 
had an open field for their fire from three quarters 
of the compass. 

The disadvantage of the 28th's sector from the 
start was that there was no screen of foliage to cover 
a deployment before a charge. On the night of 
the 26th the battalion which had beem held up by 



178 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the Perrieres Hill was marched round, to carry out 
the plan of " scalloping," for an attack on the 
Chene Tondu, which was an escarpment projecting 
out of the Forest into the valley of the Aire north 
of Montblainville, like a wood-covered promontory 
into a strait. It commanded the whole river valley 
and the Forest edge on its front. Its slopes were 
irregular, with every irregularity seeming to favor 
the defender, who at every point looked down-hill 
upon the attacker. Behind it was another escarp- 
ment, even stronger, the Taille 1'Abbe. Between 
the two the enemy had ample wooded space for 
moving his reserves and artillery free from observa- 
tion. Should the Chene Tondu be lost, the enemy 
had only to withdraw with punishing rearguard fire 
to this second bastion. On the reverse slope of the 
Taille l'Abbe were hospitals, comfortable officers' 
quarters, and dugouts, while the artillery in position 
there could shoot over the Chene Tondu with plung- 
ing fire upon its approaches. Along the heights of 
the Forest edge and other heights to the rear, other 
guns, as many as the Germans could spare for the 
sector, might find perfect camouflage and security. 

There were also the heights of the east bank of 
the Aire to consider. With the river winding past 
their feet they interlocked across the valley. Thus 
advancing down the valley meant advancing against 
heights in front as well as on the flanks. Stretching 



BY THE LEFT 179 

back to the whale-back itself beyond the heights of 
the east bank were other heights, even more com- 
manding, whose reverse slopes offered the same 
kind of inviting cover for long-range artillery as 
the reverse slopes on the west bank. If a height on 
one bank were not taken at the same time as the 
corresponding height on the other, this meant mur- 
derous exposure for the men in the attack that suc- 
ceeded. Therefore, thrifty and fruitful success re- 
quired a uniformity of movement by the three divi- 
sions of the First Corps in conquering the heights 
of both banks of the Aire and of the Forest's edge. 

For the 28th the taking of the Chene Tondu was 
the keystone of the advance. Until it had this 
height, the 28th could not support the movement of 
the 77th in the Forest or of the 35th on the east bank 
of the Aire. The Germans had concentrated their 
immediate reserves on the Chene Tondu, and their 
guns on its supporting heights. 

If the German staff had planned the woods in 
front of the main slopes of Chene Tondu, they 
could hardly have been in a better location for 
affording invisibility to machine-gun nests against a 
visible foe. To have taken the Chene Tondu by 
one fell rush, as our staff desired, might have been 
possible through sheer weight of man-power by the 
mustering of all the division's infantry against one 
sector of its front, supported by the artillery of two 



180 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

or three divisions with unlimited ammunition. The 
artillery of the 28th was not up. It was having the 
same trouble about roads as the artillery of other 
divisions. When the officers of the 28th scouted 
the avenues of approach in order to maneuver their 
infantry units economically, they found none which 
would not require that we charge across open and 
rising ground against an enemy whose strength our 
men were to learn by " feeling it " in an attack with- 
out adequate shields into concentrations of shell-and 
machine-gun fire which became the more powerful 
the more ground they gained. 

Availing themselves of every possible opening 
where the enemy's fire was relatively weak, they 
forced their way into the village of Apremont in 
the valley. As soon as this success was known to 
him, the enemy made up for any neglect in prevision 
by bringing guns and machine-guns into position to 
command the village. Wherever the Pennsylvanians 
made a thrust, if a savage reception were not primed 
awaiting them, one was soon arranged. Their 
maneuvers were further hampered by the bends of 
an unfordable river, which a direct attack for any 
great depth would have to cross and recross under 
the interlocking fire. Troops on the narrow river 
bottom were visible as flies on a wall. Every hour 
German resistance was strengthening in the Aire 
sector as in other vital sectors along the front. 



BY THE LEFT 181 

Their guns up, the division attacked the Chene 
Tondu a second time in the vigor of renewed con- 
iidence and in the light of the knowledge they had 
gained of the enemy's dispositions. They won a 
footing; and then attacked again. Their effort now 
became incessant in trying to make more bites at 
close quarters, as they struggled for complete mas- 
tery. The Germans infiltrated back between our 
units, and we infiltrated forward between theirs. 
We might think that we had possession of ground 
over a certain portion of front, only to find that our 
efforts to " mop up " were thwarted. With Chene 
Tondu partly conquered in the search for advantage 
in maneuver, we moved on the Taille l'Abbe in 
flank; and there we found the Germans, thanks to 
their fresh reserves, in irresistible force. They 
were firing prodigal quantities of gas-shells wherever 
our men took cover in any stretch of woods they 
had conquered. 

The 35th on the east bank of the Aire was meet- 
ing with deadly opposition which held it back, as 
we shall see when its story is told. Maintaining 
liaison on the heights of the east bank with the 28th 
astride the river was fraught with the same ele- 
ments of confusion as with the 77th in the monstrous 
irregularity of the escarpments on the Forest's edge. 
To which division belonged the khaki figures break- 
ing out of a ravine in an effort to rush a machine- 



1 82 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

gun nest which held them at its mercy? One thing 
was certain: they must either advance or retreat. 
Under the whip of impulse as well as orders they 
tried to advance. Messages exchanged between 
neighboring division headquarters, under the pres- 
sure of the Corps command to get ahead, were de- 
pendent upon reports long in coming out of the 
recesses of the woods. Each division staff in its 
faith in the courage of its men, who were fighting 
on their nerves after sleepless nights, insisted that 
it was doing its part and would be up — and that, by 
God! it was up. 

The possession of the Aire heights was all impor- 
tant to the Army command, still undaunted in its 
ambition for the immediate conquest of the whale- 
back in those fateful days at the -end of September. 
On the 29th two Leavenworth men from Grand 
Headquarters itself — while two regular colonels 
were sent to regiments — were put in command of 
the brigades of the 28th. One of the colonels was 
killed before he took over his command, and the 
other later in leading a charge. On the 30th the 
division was to make another general attack, sup- 
ported by all available artillery and tanks; but a few 
minutes before the infantry were to charge, the Ger- 
mans developed a counter-attack in force. Their 
troops were middle-aged Landwehr men, who made 
up in spirit what they lacked in youth. They had 



BY THE LEFT 183 

been told that theirs was the opportunity to help 
the Fatherland in a critical moment against these 
untrained Americans. The courage with which they 
persisted in their charge was worthy of a better 
cause. It recalled the freshness and abandon of 
German volunteers in the first battle of Ypres. 
Our infantry, already in line to advance over the 
same ground as the counter-attack, received it with 
a merciless fire which its ranks kept breasting in 
fruitless sacrifice. Our tanks, waiting to move for- 
ward with our infantry at the moment set for our 
own attack, carried out their program and lit- 
erally rolled over many of the survivors of the 
charge in which our youth had learned some respect 
for age. Our attack was countermanded, and the 
next day was October 1st, which was to mark 
another period of the battle, as I have said. 

It had been a good policy in more senses than 
one to send regulars to take command of the 
brigades of the 28th. Assigned for the purpose of 
seeing that the division " pushed ahead," when they 
looked over the situation their conclusions were a 
supreme professional tribute to the magnificent per- 
sistence of the Pennsylvanians, who had already 
earned the sobriquet of the Iron Division in place 
of that of the Keystone Division. Short of food, 
without sleep, saturated by rain and gas, the men 
of the 28th had won their gains with superb and 



1 84 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tireless initiative, and held them with grim tenacity. 
In a burning fever of loyal effort, their vitality had 
been ungrudgingly expended. They staggered from 
fatigue when they rose to charge. Not only was all 
the area of advance under shell-fire, but that road 
through Varennes which both the 28th and the 35th 
were using was exposed to ruthless and well-calcu- 
lated blasts from many guns, disrupting communica- 
tions and further delaying the congested transport. 
The new brigade commanders, with staff school edu- 
cation and staff experience, as became practical men 
when face to face with nerve and physical strain 
which put limitations of human endurance upon the 
will of the high command, accepted their lesson, 
which they applied by withdrawing units to give 
them rest, and having the units remaining in front 
" dig in," while processes of reorganization accom- 
panied a phase of recuperation during the coming 
lull in the battle. 

The same devoted offering of strong and willing 
men in the flush of aggressive manhood by the 
Kansans and Missourians of the 35th, on the left 
of the 28th, which had the heaviest casualty list of 
any division from September 26th to October 1st, 
was not to have the good fortune of such understand- 
ing direction. Kansas and Missouri took all their 
pride as well as their natural courage and hardihood 
into this battle. Their left flank was from the first 



BY THE LEFT 185 

on the heights to the east of the Aire in full view 
of the Forest edge and its escarpments. On the 
right they were swinging toward the heights west 
of Montfaucon. The particularly dense fog hug- 
ging the ground on their front in the first hour of 
their advance made the liaison between the bat- 
talions difficult from the start. The two formidable 
heights of Vauquois hill and the Rossignol Wood 
were masked by troops sweeping speedily by them 
on either side in brilliant fashion, and left to the 
battalions detailed for the purpose, which cleaned 
them up with thoroughgoing alacrity. Meanwhile 
the frontal line drove ahead against machine-gun 
fire in front and flanking artillery fire from the 
right until it was in the vicinity of Cheppy. 

As we already know, there had been trouble im- 
mediately in Varennes, where the 35th was linked 
with the 28th. The 35th received both shells and 
machine-gun fire from the high ground of the town 
and from the heights which were firing down on the 
28th. Both division reports speak of having taken 
Varennes, which is well spread on the river banks. 
There was room enough for the troops of both to 
operate, with plenty of work for both to do before 
their common efforts had cleared the ruins of their 
infestuous occupants. The tanks also had a part in 
this success. Wherever there was anything like 
favorable ground in that irregular landscape, they 



1 86 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

did valuable service ; and they tried to pass through 
woods and across ravines which only sublime audac- 
ity would have attempted — and sometimes they suc- 
ceeded. Their visibility at short range to the 
numerous enemy batteries made any part in the bat- 
tle by them seem suicidal. 

The formation for the attack was by brigades in 
column: that is, one of the two brigades in reserve 
behind the other that took the lead. On that first 
day, when a regiment of the frontal brigade was 
stopped by casualties, another was sent through it. 
The plan was to crowd in the eager men. It was 
their first big fight. They had impatiently trained 
for this chance. The individualism of these stal- 
wart high-strung Middle Westerners was allowed 
full rein. To them a fight meant that you did not 
give the enemy any time to think; you forced the 
issue with smashing rights and vicious uppercuts at 
the start, a robust constitution receiving cheerfully 
and stoically any punishment inflicted as you sought 
a knockout. 

Therefore flanking fire was only a call to pressing 
the enemy harder and having the business the 
sooner finished. There was no waiting for guns to 
come up, as Cheppy on the right was taken soon 
after Varennes on the left. Losses, particularly of 
senior officers, were becoming serious by this time; 
units, though scattered and intermingled in the fog, 



BY THE LEFT 187 

only wanted direction to go on. Having been re- 
organized and being supported by fresh battalions, 
the advance continued. By night the 35th's left was 
well north of Varennes, its right near Very, and the 
approaches to Charpentry had been gained. On 
that first day the 35th, fighting against flanking and 
frontal artillery and machine-gun fire, had made 
four miles in mastering the east bank of the trough 
of the Aire; but it had paid a price which was a 
tragic if splendid tribute to the courageous initiative 
of its men. The artillerists were working hectically 
to bridge the little streams for their pieces; that 
one-way bridge which two divisions were trying to 
use through Varennes congested the other traffic. 
According to the division report, instead of proper 
rations for the troops, there was an issue of 
fresh meat and vegetables with no means for 
cooking. 

The divisional artillery was expected to be up by 
eight o'clock on the morning of the 27th to renew 
the attack, but higher authority could not wait on its 
support. In full realization of the strength of the 
enemy's artillery, Corps orders to advance at 5 A.M. 
must be obeyed, with only one battalion of light 
guns to protect the men in an endeavor that must 
be far more costly than yesterday's. The Kansans 
and Missourians were of the stock that can fight to 
a finish; and they were expected to fight to a finish. 



1 88 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The 70th Brigade, whose units had already been 
engaged and had been all day under more or less 
fire and advancing behind the 69th, was put in front, 
with the 69th in close reserve, ready to take up the 
battle when the 70th had suffered too heavily. 

Overnight the enemy had reinforced the com- 
manding position of Charpentry, which was the 
keypoint of his line of defense against the 35th. It 
sent down gusts of machine-gun fire while the in- 
creased enemy artillery on both flanks played on 
the open fields of advance, where, after the attack 
slowed down, the men continued to spring up and 
charge, in the hope that they had found an opening, 
only to be met with machine-gun fire from unex- 
pected quarters. Tanks having been brought up and 
reorganization effected, another general rush was 
made, which aroused such a torrent of fire that the 
infantry, without their shields for advance, could 
only seek what protection they could dig or find in 
gullies behind banks or in shell-holes. 

The artillery, which had worked ceaselessly all 
night and day to get forward, was now arriving, and 
with its support a new advance, which crowded in 
more troops, was undertaken at 5.30 in the after- 
noon. The artillery silenced some of the machine- 
gun nests, though it could not reach the enemy bat- 
tery positions; but by the grace of their undaunted 
determination and energy the Kansans and Mis- 



BY THE LEFT 189 

sourians took both Charpentry and the town of 
Baulny. In the darkness some daring units pressed 
through the Montrebeau Wood, while the main line 
dug in near Baulny to secure what protection it 
could from the shells whose flashes illumined vigor- 
ous spading, which had an incentive in the vicious 
singing of the fragments. 

It had been another costly day, and the night that 
followed was ghastly for the wounded. They were 
gathered from the field under incessant bursts of 
machine-gun fire; and when they were brought in, 
the crowded roads made their evacuation horribly 
slow. The struggle to force ammunition and sup- 
plies forward over the main road did not relax in 
the area behind the troops, where all through the 
night the German artillery, which had the ap- 
proaches to Charpentry and Baulny perfectly regis- 
tered, kept up a fire shrewdly calculated to block a 
movement every time it started. 

All the artillery was now up to support the troops 
being re-formed for another attack at daybreak, 
which was preceded by a counter-attack of the enemy 
which was promptly repulsed. More open spaces 
than yesterday must be crossed in full view of the 
enfilading batteries, particularly those firing from 
the west bank of the Aire. Ground was gained all 
along the front: ground important for the terrible 
day's work that was to follow. While the wounded, 



190 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

suffering from exposure, were walking back or being 
carried back across the shelled fields and along the 
shelled roads, the survivors must spend the night in 
leaving nothing undone to insure the success of the 
next morning's attack, which was to capitalize every 
atom of vitality remaining in this hard-driven divi- 
sion. Again the men were short of regular rations; 
and the fresh beef and vegetables which were again 
forced upon them could not be cooked. It was raw 
fighting, indeed, on raw meat and raw potatoes 
which was expected of the 35th. Incidentally the 
divisional transport was short fourteen hundred 
horses. 

The loss of officers in their gallant exposure to 
keep up the liaison of the units had continued severe. 
For this reason alone the 35th, which was having its 
first battle experience, was unprepared for a far less 
onerous task than that now assigned it. With nerve 
strength in place of physical strength, with will in 
place of adequate organization, the division was sent 
into a veritable alley, which could be swept by artil- 
lery fire from the Forest edge across the Aire as 
well as from the other flank and in front. The 
instant the attack began, the enemy guns concen- 
trated with a pitiless accuracy and a volume of fire 
completely surpassing that of the other days. In 
places the advance was literally blasted to a stand- 
still. 



BY THE LEFT 191 

The village of Exermont which was the main goal 
was mercilessly exposed in that ravine where the 
enemy shell-fire had the play of a cataract through 
a gorge. Some men actually reached the village, 
but they could not remain there alive. Groups 
charging for what seemed cover only ran into 
more shell-bursts. The dead and wounded lay in 
" bunches " under the continuing blasts which dis- 
rupted organization, while officers in trying to re- 
store it sacrificed themselves. There was no want 
of courage ; but the division was undertaking the 
impossible. Every spurt of initiative was as futile 
as thrusting a finger into a stove door. Confused 
orders were further confused in transmission. 

When night of the 29th came, there was nothing 
to do but for the 35th to withdraw, for lack of any 
means of supporting them, its exposed units from 
Montrebeau Wood and Exermont. The ravine 
could not be held until the guns commanding it 
were silenced and fresh troops in numbers were 
summoned. A willing horse had been driven to its 
death. The 35th's units had been crowded into the 
front line until the only reserves it had were men 
too exhausted from fighting to move. On the 30th 
a defensive position was organized. A battalion 
of the 82nd Division, brought up with a view to re- 
newing the attack, met a killing barrage which 
warned commanders that advancing one fresh bat- 



192 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

talion was only throwing more cannon-fodder into 
the ravine. 

Throughout the 30th the men of the 35th held 
their ground under continuous artillery fire, which 
could not keep many from falling asleep in their 
exhaustion; but they were awakened to retributive 
zeal by two German counter-attacks, their marks- 
manship being a warning to the enemy that though 
they had not the strength to advance they still knew 
how to shoot. On the night of the 30th the 35th 
was relieved by the veteran 1st Division. Gaunt 
and staggering, shadows of the sturdy figures which 
had advanced on the 26th, the survivors plodded 
back to rest billets, to find that in some quarters the 
view was held that the division had done badly. No 
more inconsiderate reflection upon brave men was 
ever engendered in the impulses of battle emotion, 
with its hasty judgment. 

In an advance of over six miles the 35th had suf- 
fered 6,312 casualties. Nearly half of its infantry 
was dead on the field or in hospital. The other half 
was in a coma from fatigue. Every rod gained had 
been won by fighting against fire as baffling as it was 
powerful. To say that the 35 th fought for five 
days as a division is hardly doing it justice. A divi- 
sion may be said to be fighting when only one 
brigade is in line while the other is resting. All the 
men of the 35th were fighting. There were soldiers 



BY THE LEFT 193 

who did not have five hours' sleep in that period of 
unbroken battle strain in the midst of the dead and 
dying. Only the powerful physique of the men, 
with their store of reserve energy which they drew 
on to the last fraction, enabled them to bear it as 
long as they did. Their courage and endurance and 
dash performed a mighty service in a most critical 
sector. Instead of being the object of any ungen- 
erous reflections by captious pedants or commanders 
who did not know how to command, after they had 
given their generous all they should have been wel- 
comed with a warmth of praise in keeping with 
their proud and justifiable consciousness that they 
had done their red-blooded best. 



XII 



BY THE CENTER 

The wooded front of the Fifth Corps — Where the Germans dis- 
counted the chance of an attack — Particularly by a division 
that had never been under fire — The Pacific Coast men 
through the woods for a five-mile gain — And, its artillery up, 
keeps on for nearly as much more — Into a dangerous position 
which cannot be held — The " hand-made " attack of the 
Ohioans — Surprise carries them in a rush through the pathless 
woods — Three days of unsupported advance against counter- 
attacks — Open country for the advance of the 79th up the 
valley to Montfaucon — And open country beyond toward 
Nantillois and the whale-back — The 79th " expended." 

Cameron's Fifth Corps, which made the central 
drive head on to the whale-back, relied, in master-, 
ing the distance it had to cover on the first day as 
the " bulge " of the Army movement, upon the 
freshness of its troops, whose inexperience would 
be only another incentive to hold up their end. No 
aspect of the plan of our command was more auda- 
cious or more thrilling than the decision to expend 
in one prodigious ruthless effort the energy of the 
37th, 79th, and 91st Divisions and their impatience 
for action accumulated in their long period in train- 
ing camps. 

It was in this that we defied accepted standards; 
in this that we carried to the seemingly quixotic 

194 




^ Q 



BY THE CENTER 195 

limit our confidence in our ability to transform on 
short notice citizens into soldiers who would go bolt 
from the drill-ground into a charge that was to take 
an elaborate trench system as the prelude of from 
five to six miles of advance in the days of mobile 
interlocking machine-gun fire. Anyone who was 
surprised that they did not go as far as they were 
told to go on the first day had forgotten the power 
of modern weapons in defense, and was oblivious 
of the military significance of the ground which the 
Corps had to traverse. 

The right division, the 79th, had before it a com- 
paratively woodless stretch following the Esnes- 
Montfaucon road among the hills to Montfaucon, 
but the other two divisions faced the German 
trenches at the edge of a deep belt, or rather mass, 
of woods as dense as the Argonne, which, though 
broken by only one open space of a breadth more 
marked than a roadway, had sectional names — 
Montfaucon, Very, Bethincourt, Cheppy, Malan- 
court, — each taken from the name of the nearest 
neighboring town. The store which the Germans 
set by these woods had been shown by their stub- 
born resistance to the attacks of the French for 
their possession in 19 15. 

When the Germans detected — as they did despite 
our care — unusual activity on our roads in this sec- 
tor during the later stages of our preparations, they 



196 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

made the raid of September 22nd, already men- 
tioned, which took a man of the 79th prisoner; but 
evidently they did not learn from him of the pres- 
ence of the other two divisions. German prisoners 
said that an Allied attack was expected along the 
whole front from Metz to Champagne, but that it 
would be limited to the front-line positions — a feint, 
to cover the offensive from Soissons to the Channel. 
Certainly the enemy had no thought that we would 
try to storm the woods on the first day. On Sep- 
tember 1 8th a memorandum of the 1st German 
Guard Division, in occupation of this sector, said: 

It is unlikely that the enemy will direct his attack against 
the wooded territory in Sector K ( Cheppy Wood ) or against 
the neighboring sectors on our left. He would have to meet 
an unknown situation, and to advance through the heavy 
underbrush of the woods, which are totally secured from 
observation, would be very difficult. . . . 

It is only in the case of a deliberate offensive against the 
whole front of the Group or Army that there should be 
any retirement to the main line of resistance (the Lai Fuon 
ravine). 

The main line of resistance must be held in any event. 

The Lai Fuon ravine really bisected the woods 
transversally into two masses or belts. In describ- 
ing the action of the Corps, which had the mission 
of taking the ravine and both sections of the woods, 
I shall begin with the oJst Division, National Army 



BY THE CENTER 197 

from the Pacific Slope, on the left. The 91st had 
never been in any except a practice trench, or heard 
a bullet or shell fired in battle, when it went into 
position for the attack. On its left was the 35th 
of the First Corps, and on its right the 37th of its 
own Fifth Corps. For artillery the 91st had that 
of the 33rd, and a battalion from the 82nd. The 
fact that the 33rd was also using borrowed artillery 
in its own attack is sufficiently indicative of the 
character of the hasty and heterogeneous mobiliza- 
tion of our unprepared army for the battle. 

The Pacific Coast men had traveled far, clear 
across the Continent and across the Atlantic. Trav- 
eling was in their line. If distance had kept them 
from reaching the front as soon as some of the 
eastern divisions, noticeably those praised New 
Yorkers of the 77th, they would show that they 
could move fast and stick in the war to the end. 
The pioneer heritage was theirs; they were neigh- 
bors to Alaska, who looked toward Asia across the 
Pacific: big men who thought big and were used to 
doing big things. Their people depended upon them 
for great deeds worthy of their homes beyond the 
Great Divide. As the National Guard divisions 
from the Pacific Coast had had the misfortune, 
through sudden necessities when they were the only 
available men in depot, to be cut up for replace- 
ment, the men of the 91st had as an intact division 



198 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

a special responsibility in upholding the honor of 
the Coast. 

They had the stamina which their climate breeds. 
They were under no apprehension that their inex- 
perience in battle would not enable them to take 
care of the Germans they met, once they were 
through the trenches and in the open. As men of 
the distances, they had imagination which applied 
all their training to the situations which they would 
have to encounter. No veterans ever went into ac- 
tion with more confidence than these draft men. 
The roar of the surf on Pacific beaches, of the car- 
wheels from the Coast to New York, of the steam- 
ship propellers across the Atlantic, was the song of 
their gathered energy suddenly released in a charge. 

The wire on their front had not been well cut; 
but what might have been a justifiable cause for 
delay they overcame in an intrepidity of purpose 
supported by a team-play which prevented confu- 
sion of their units. Happily the prompt taking 
by the stalwart Kansans and Missourians of the 
Vauquois hill positions commanding the Gist's field 
of advance, which had been the object of the French 
attacks in 191 5, removed a formidable threat on 
their left. The Germans, who had been told that a 
division which had never been under fire was on their 
front, had no thought that it would attempt a seri- 
ous attack. They were accordingly the more unpre- 



BY THE CENTER 199 

pared for the avalanche of man-power which came 
rushing at them. Relatively few in numbers, 
waiting on the 5th Guard Division to come up in 
reserve, they had a painfully urgent desire to start 
to the rear and meet it on its way forward. 

If the uncut wire had made progress slow for the 
men of the 91st at the start, once these fast trav- 
elers were past the fortifications, they stretched 
their legs in earnest as they rushed through the 
thickets of the first belt, which in their sector was 
the Cheppy Wood, in a practically unbroken ad- 
vance. When they came out in front of the Lai 
Fuon ravine, they had the " jump " on the enemy 
on their front. He had not the numbers to form 
up for a determined defense on that main line of 
resistance which he was supposed to hold in any 
event. The best he could do was a skilful rear- 
guard action. Speedy as they were, the Pacific 
Coast men could not force the enemy, who sur- 
rendered or withdrew after bursts of machine-gun 
fire, to close with the bayonet, as they desired. 

Having fought their way through the Very Wood, 
the narrowing spur of the second belt, which ex- 
tended only part way across their front, they had 
now open hilly country, for the most part, before 
them. The men were warmed up for their after- 
noon's work. As they continued to gather in pris- 
oners, as they pressed steadily ahead against rear- 



2oo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

guard resistance, they maintained the liaison of their 
units admirably. By nightfall they had advanced 
nearly five miles. The Coast might well be proud 
of its sons in their first day's battle. 

They had been fortunate in preventing congestion 
of their transport, and their artillery was fast com- 
ing up in support when they attacked with unbroken 
vigor the next morning. They were to find, as all 
other divisions found, that the second day was a 
different kind of day from the first. As all their 
power was needed on the 27th to support the 37th 
Division in its attack for the ridges protecting 
Montfaucon, all four regiments were put into line, 
with orders to go as far as they could, regardless 
of whether or not their ardor carried them ahead 
of the other divisions into a salient. They drove the 
enemy out of the positions which he had taken up 
overnight, and continued their advance in repeated 
charges against his increasing resistance. Parties 
charged into the village of Epinonville several times, 
to receive a blistering cross-fire from positions in 
flank and rear, and from the Cierges Wood, where 
the German machine-gunners looked down upon all 
the streets and approaches of the village. 

Though its flanks were still exposed, the 91st was 
told to go ahead the next day, the plan of the Army 
command, as we have seen, being to use all the 
fight there was in every division on the 28th, when 



BY THE CENTER 201 

our ambition still dared an immediate conquest of 
the whale-back after the taking of Montfaucon. 
Switching now to a two-regiment front, after fifteen 
minutes of preparation by the artillery, which was 
all in position, the Pacific Coast men again attacked 
on the third day, which, in turn, they were to find 
different from the second. While the guns kept 
moving forward and striving to lay down pro- 
tecting barrages and to smash machine-gun nests, 
they made a mile and a half against resistance 
hourly becoming more vicious and determined, tak- 
ing Epinonville and entering the Cierges Wood, 
which was to earn such a sinister reputation. 

Despite the general results of September 28th, 
which had somewhat dampened its ambition for a 
prompt decision, the Army command, now seeking 
to drive a wedge into the heights between the Aire 
and whale-back in order to break the chain of its 
covering defenses, ordered the 91st to continue at- 
tacking on the 29th. The two regiments in the 
rear, which had had a little rest, passed through 
the two that had been exhausted by the hard work 
in front on the 28th. Two battalions of the engi- 
neers, whose indefatigability had kept the roads in 
shape, were sent into line. As we know, the engi- 
neers were never allowed to be idle. If they had 
nothing else to do, they could fight. 

The morning advance drove its point beyond the 



202 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Cierges Wood, but was checked by merciless fire 
from Cierges village on the right. Though the 
front was in a salient, still the orders were " at all 
costs" to "push ahead." At 3.40 that afternoon, 
after forty minutes' preparation by the artillery, 
which was keeping faithfully up to the infantry 
despite the weariness of horses and men, the right 
once more moved forward with a vigor that was 
amazing after the four days' strain, and succeeded 
in passing through Gesnes and in gaining a footing 
in Morine and Chene Sec Woods on its left. Every 
rod farther meant an increase of overwhelming 
cross-fire. Either there must be support on the flanks 
from the adjoining divisions, or this tongue of men 
thrust into furious cross-fire must be withdrawn. 
Support could not be given. The 35th Division 
on the left was stopped in the shambles of the 
Exermont ravine, the 37th on the right was facing 
counter-attacks. Accordingly on the night of the 
29th the 91st fell back to the front of the morn- 
ing's gains. The 32nd, which was to have such 
hard fighting in retaking the positions which the 
91st had temporarily held, was to relieve it on 
October 4th. During the 30th the 91st organized 
defensive positions, and until October 4th held its 
ground under continuous artillery and machine-gun 
fire as well as harassing blasts of machine-gun bul- 
lets from low-flying enemy aeroplanes. Though the 



BY THE CENTER 203 

men were suffering from exposure and diarrhea, the 
whole division was not to be relieved. The 1 8 1 st 
Brigade, under Brigadier-General John B. Mac- 
Donald, was assigned to the 1st and 32nd Divisions 
to take part in the greater effort of fresh troops to 
break the heights between the crest of the whale- 
back and the Aire, which was to be such a brilliant 
and costly exploit. The 91st had advanced for a 
depth of nearly eight miles, and held its gains for 
a depth of nearly seven miles. 

It might be said that the 37th Division had had, 
as National Guardsmen, a longer military experi- 
ence than the other two divisions of the Corps, and 
some trench experience in a tranquil sector, which, 
however, was slight technical preparation for the 
offensive action which it was now to make. If ever 
there was a " hand-made " battle, it was that of 
the Ohio men. For artillery they had the brigade 
of the 30th Division, which, after five days' hard 
marching when it should have been brought by 
train, arrived with its men exhausted and its horses 
utterly so. There were no French guns to assist 
this tired artillery brigade, operating with a division 
with which it was associated for the first time. 

Ohio's predilection for politics is well-known; and 
it has even been said that her National Guardsmen 
took some interest in politics. The politics of 
September 26th was Republican-Democrat-Socialist 



20 4 0UR GREATEST BATTLE 

politics, — all the political genius of Ohio, town and 
country, from the river to the lake, armed, trained, 
and resolute. I have no idea what part these sol- 
diers will play in the future of Ohio elections; but 
I do know how they fought in the Meuse-Argonne. 
It is something that Ohio should not forget. 

Their rush through the trench system was soon 
over. Ahead was the full depth of nearly four 
miles of the Montfaucon woods which I have al- 
ready described. The old trench system was partly 
in the midst of woodland wreckage, caused by long 
sieges of artillery fire, of the same character as that 
facing the 77th in the Argonne Forest. In its 
attack through the thickets the 37th was to have the 
assistance of no scalloping movement in forcing the 
enemy's withdrawal from its front. 

I have already referred to the enemy's conviction 
that our " untrained " troops would not have the 
temerity to attempt an attack which comprised the 
taking of this deep belt of woods; and do not forget 
that half way through the belt, which it really 
divided into two sections, was the Lai Fuon ravine. 
Here, as our troops emerged to descend the hither 
and ascend the opposite slope, they would be in full 
view; and here, in the edge of the woods on the far 
slope, the Germans had long ago organized the posi- 
tions for that main line of resistance which the 
enemy memorandum of September 18th had said 



BY THE CENTER 205 

must be held in any event, — which did not include, 
however, the event of a drive by the Ohio men of 
the same swiftness as that of the Pacific Coast men 
on their left. 

Had the 5th German Guard Division come up a 
little earlier, had the Germans had time to mass 
reserves for the defense of the ravine, it seems im- 
possible that it could have been conquered without 
a siege operation. The value of taking an enemy 
by surprise and audaciously following up the sur- 
prise was singularly illustrated by the rushing tactics 
of the Ohio infantry, who cleared the whole depth 
of the woods on the first day. When they were 
halted, it was not for long. Theirs was no cautious 
policy. Their reserves, keeping close to the front 
line, were ready instantly to add their weight in the 
balance in charging any refractory machine-gun 
nests. The Germans never had time to form up for 
prolonged or effective resistance. Their familiarity 
with the woods made retreat behind the screen of 
underbrush the more inviting in face of the nu- 
merous figures in khaki which they saw swarming 
forward through the openings in the foliage. In- 
stead of a determined stand on the Lai Fuon line, 
there was only a rearguard action, fitfully though 
never clumsily carried out by the veteran Prussians, 
in their injured pride at having to yield to the 
American novices. 



206 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

With no thought except to keep on going, when 
the Ohioans emerged from the woods into the open, 
they pressed on toward the commanding positions of 
Montfaucon on their right. The fact that there was 
nothing like a practicable road for their transport 
through the woods behind them now developed a 
handicap which they appreciated keenly in their 
eager appetites and the thought of shields for the 
next days' attacks. Though tanks and artillery 
were of no service in the woods, they were needed 
now. The tanks assigned to assist the Ohioans as 
they came into the open did not arrive until the eve- 
ning, when they were short of gasoline. The artil- 
lery, by the use of snatch ropes, managed to bring 
up one battalion of guns to the south of the 
ravine. 

When rain began to fall, it made the woodland 
earth soft, hampering the efforts of the engineers, 
who themselves labored without food all the day and 
all through the night and all the next day without 
pause, as they dug and chopped away roots and cut 
saplings for corduroys in making a passage through 
that four-mile stretch of forest — and foret it was 
though called a bois — which separated the fighters 
from their beleaguered supplies. Signal corps 
carts, so necessary to lay the wire for the communi- 
cations which would enable the infantry to send in 
reports and receive orders promptly, and the small 



BY THE CENTER 207 

arms ammunition carts, which would keep soldiers 
who were without their shields from being without 
cartridges as well, were forced through by dint of 
an arduous persistence in answer to the urgency of 
the call. Rolling kitchens with warm meals could 
do no more rolling than if they were hotel kitchens. 
Ambulances had to wait at the edge of the forest 
for wounded brought three and four miles on 
stretchers or plodding on foot or hobbling on canes 
and crutches made from tree limbs. 

Was this division, with its artillery, its ammuni- 
tion trucks, and all its supplies waiting upon a road 
through four miles of the forest whose time of com- 
pletion was uncertain, to attack the next day after 
all the exertion of working its way through the 
forest? Of course. The Fifth Corps was supposed 
to take Montfaucon on the night of the 26th. 
Montfaucon must be taken on the 27th, and early, 
too, or the pencilings on the maps would be fatally 
behind ambitious objectives in the center. To the 
west of Montfaucon in small patches of woods and 
on crests were the positions of the Volker Stellung, 
which the Germans had plotted, though they had 
done no digging, for the defense of Montfaucon; 
but the lines where trenches were to be dug and the 
points machine-guns were to occupy had been care- 
fully assigned. Therefore units of reserves as they 
arrived would know exactly where to go without 



/208 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

loss of time. Naturally, we wanted to attack this 
position while it was still weakly held. For all the 
Ohio men knew, the enemy might have already con- 
centrated there in force, when without their artil- 
lery, machine-guns, or trench mortars, uncertain 
even of a constant supply of small arms ammuni- 
tion, they began their second day's action at the 
break of dawn. In swift charges the right over- 
ran the ridges, overwhelming German reserves, who 
were arriving too late, on their way forward. By 
ii it had patrols in Montfaucon, and by 1.30 in 
the afternoon it had cleared the enemy from the 
cellars as well as from the steep and winding 
streets of the town, which were littered with the 
debris of buildings that had crumbled under shell- 
fire. 

Against the left brigade the Germans did not 
depend upon defensive tactics alone. Their reserves, 
more prompt in arriving than on the right, counter- 
attacked at 9 A.M. to stem the brigade's advance. 
There was a pitched battle, a conflict of charges, 
for a fierce half-hour; but the brigade, putting in 
the last of its reserves, won the mastery, and at 
9.30 was in pursuit of the enemy. An hour later its 
advance elements, running a gamut of artillery and 
machine-gun fire, were in the village of Ivoiry. 
Now turning their attention to the conquest of Hill 
256 beyond the town, which was lashing them with 



BY THE CENTER 209 

plunging machine-gun fire, storming parties finally 
swept over the crest; but their exposure to the 
blasts which the enemy promptly concentrated made 
their position untenable. With the left holding its 
gains after this slight withdrawal, the center ad- 
vanced at 5.45 and took a strong and threatening 
position which made the victory of the day more 
secure. The line at dark was along the Ivoiry- 
Montfaucon road. 

After the exhaustion of fighting its way through 
the forest on the first day, the 37th had used every 
available man on the second day. The engineers 
had now made a road through the forest. This, 
being unequal to caring for all the transport in a 
steady flow, was the more inadequate owing to the 
delays due to the repair of sloughs, which were al- 
ways appearing at some point in its four-mile length. 
Hungry infantrymen lying on the moist ground 
were wondering if they would ever have the strength 
to rise again. The prodigal, hasty crowding in of 
reserves which necessity required had exposed all 
the troops to the widespread artillery fire and the 
long-range sweep of bullets, which caused many 
casualties. 

On the next day, the 28th, the Army command, 
as we know, was to call for a supreme effort all 
along the line. Despite the tireless labor of the 
gunners with their snatch ropes, most of the 37th's 



2io OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

artillery was still stalled where it could be of no 
service. Without their shields the Ohio men again 
rose to the attack at seven on the morning of the 
28th. In half an hour they had entered the Emont 
Wood on their left and the Beuge Wood on their 
right. They continued on toward the village of 
Cierges until the blasts of fire from the heights and 
woods of the whale-back, not only upon the elements 
in advance but upon those in support, forced them 
to take cover. They were now within a quarter of 
a mile of the Cierges-Nantillois road. Meanwhile 
the Germans had been filling Emont Wood with 
phosgene gas to such an extent that it became un- 
tenable. In another attack at 5.45 p.m. the Ohio 
men encircled the wood. By dark their outposts 
were just south of Cierges. 

Gettysburg did not last three full days, but any 
-veterans who fought throughout that battle will 
have some idea of what the 37th Division as a 
whole had endured on September 26th, 27th, and 
28th. The division commander reported lack of 
food and a " condition of almost collapse " among 
his men, which did not weaken the determination of 
Corps or Army to expend any energy remaining in 
the 37th in another effort on the next day to 
"" crack " the chain of heights between the Aire and 
the whale-back. How fruitless this proved only 
makes the final effort of the 37th the more appeal- 



BY THE CENTER 211 

ing. The Ohio men were willing; they were willing, 
after shivering on wet earth all night without 
blankets, as long as they had strength enough to 
stagger to their feet, — and they might have had 
more strength if they had had more food. There 
was only one relieving feature of their situation, so 
unfavorable from the first. A German water-point 
equal to supplying the whole division had been cap- 
tured. There was enough to drink, if not enough 
to eat: that is, for such units as the water-carts 
could reach. 

Yet Corps and Army thought the 37th ought to 
be very cheerful. Hadn't they been assigned, on 
the morning of the 28th, ten small tanks to assist 
them in taking Cierges? The tanks were moving 
gallantly along the western edge of Emont Wood 
until the German artillery, from the heights which 
had them in plain view, concluded that they had 
gone far enough, and put them out of action. Then 
the German artillery turned its undivided attention 
to assisting the German infantry, concentrating its 
volume upon any attempt of the Ohioans, whose 
brains and legs were numb from fatigue, to storm 
particularly murderous flanking machine-gun nests. 
Patrols, creeping up ravines and dodging bursts of 
shells, succeeded in entering Cierges. They could 
not be supported by the artillery, which was now 
up, as it had run out of ammunition. Thus our 



212 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

guns were silent when the enemy started a counter- 
attack beyond Cierges; but the vengeful and accu- 
rate fire of the infantry soon sent the survivors of 
the advancing German wave to cover. Later the 
artillery, having received some ammunition, when 
it had an aeroplane signal of the Germans massing 
for another counter-attack, scotched it promptly. If 
the Germans could not budge us, we could not budge 
them. Every time we showed our heads in any 
effort for another gain, we stirred up a hornet's 
nest of bullets and offered a fresh target for a 
storm of shell-bursts. 

Late in the afternoon word came from the 91st, 
asking cooperation from the 37th in a further ad- 
vance to relieve pressure on the wedge it had driven 
past the fronts of its neighbors. The fact that the 
message was two hours in transit was sufficient com- 
ment on the state of communication between divi- 
sions which had extended themselves to the limit 
of their power. The Ohio men who were already 
intrenching might still be willing to charge, but it 
was the willingness of the spirit rather than of the 
flesh. Had every gun and machine-gun on their 
front there on the threshold of the whale-back been 
silenced, and had they been ordered to march 
another two miles over that rough ground, a ma- 
jority would have dropped in their tracks from ex- 
haustion. There was nothing to do but stick where 



BY THE CENTER 213 

they were. This was as easy as for logs of wood 
to lie in their places. They fell asleep over their 
spades, and the bursts of high-explosive shells which 
shook the earth did not waken them. All they asked 
of the world was rest and food. 

Remaining in a stationary line all the next day, 
they had recovered enough strength to march back 
when the 32nd Division relieved them on the night 
of the 30th. At the cost of 3,460 casualties their 
rushing tactics, keeping the jump on the enemy, had 
taken 1,120 prisoners and 23 guns. Fatigue and 
sickness from exposure, as well as casualties, had 
worn them down. If they had fought with less 
abandon of energy, with less resolute and vivid 
spirit, their casualties would have been much larger. 
From the first they had thrown in all their reserves; 
and to the end they had fought with all their num- 
bers in order to overcome the handicaps of their 
mission. 

On the right of the Fifth Corps the 79th Divi- 
sion, National Army from the Atlantic Coast — 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Colum- 
bia — was to have its baptism of fire at the same 
time as the Pacific Coast men on the Corps left, — 
a baptism preparing it for its memorable service 
later in taking Hill 378, or the Borne de Cornouiller, 
on the east bank of the Meuse. In place of its own 
artillery brigade, which had not yet received its 



214 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

guns, it had three regiments, less six batteries, of the 
veteran artillery of the 32nd Division, and one 
regiment of that of the 41st Division, National 
Guard from the Pacific Coast. 

As one of the two divisions which had never been 
under fire before, the 79th had been given the far- 
thest objective of any division. The German 
trenches on its front were everywhere in the open, 
crowning a gentle ridge. The wire had been badly 
cut, but the Eastern Coast men made no more fuss 
over that handicap than their neighbors. When 
they came to the top of the ridge, they might see 
the field of their action, in its relation to the Army 
plan, spread before them. There was the route of 
their advance, following a valley with the ribbon 
of the Esnes-Montfaucon road at its bottom, and 
the distant ruins of Montfaucon on their high hill 
as distinct a goal as the stone column of a light- 
liouse on a shore. They were not only to take 
this on the first day, but to pass on down the 
slopes beyond, and, conquering patches of woods" 
and ravines, carry their flying wedge to the foot of 
the heights of the whale-back. On the second day 
Army ambition designed to assail the whale-back 
Itself, as we know. Well might these inexperienced 
troops have asked in irony: " Is that all you expect 
of us? Don't you think we can do it in the fore- 
noon, and take the whale-back in the afternoon, so 



BY THE CENTER 215 

that we can get on to the Lille-Metz railway 
tomorrow?" 

As the 79th had open country to traverse, it ought 
to go fast. With adjoining divisions clearing the 
walls of the valley leading up to Montfaucon, it 
was supposed to be marching over a boulevard com- 
pared to the route which the 37th had in the Mont- 
faucon forest. Indeed every division was given the 
idea that all it had to do was to keep deployed and 
moving according to schedule. As for the distance 
itself which the 79th had to travel, any golfer may 
measure it as two and a half times that of an 
eighteen-hole round, with a quarter of the distance 
through traps and bunkers, and the rest altogether 
in the rough of a surpassingly hilly course, while he 
carries a rifle and a soldier's pack and ammunition. 
In the immediate foreground was a belt of weed- 
grown shell-craters, their edges joining, the passage 
being further complicated by the ruins of two vil- 
lages — Haucourt and Malancourt — within the area 
of the trench system. On the left, over the moist 
slippery weeds of the shell-craters, the men could 
not keep pace in the mist with the barrage, which 
hacl been made specially rapid in order to urge them 
to the rapid movement required; but this delay did 
not prove important. 

From Montfaucon the German observers could 
see the wave of khaki figures distinctly as they came 



216 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

down the slope toward the valley. It was a sight 
to thrill any veteran with professional admiration of 
the drill-ground precision of these young soldiers in 
dipping and rising with the folds of the ground. 
There seemed not enough superfluous fat among 
the division's privates to have given a single war 
profiteer that rotundity with which we associate the 
corpulency of a parvenu's fortune. They were 
pantherishly lean, trained down to elastic sinews and 
supple muscles. In every eye there was a direct and 
eager glance, quick in response to any order. Look- 
ing at these thousands of athletes, with their clean- 
cut and intelligent faces, one was not surprised that 
the Army command thought that to such men noth- 
ing was impossible. 

For the first three hours they made a parade of 
their daring mission as a flying wedge. They had 
only to continue to march, each man guiding by the 
man on his right and left, while the sun shone 
genially, and war, once they were through the trench 
system, was little more than a stroll across country 
in excellent company. The observers on Mont- 
faucon might not gratify the appetite of their eyes 
by sending over barrages of shell-fire into such a 
distinct target. All the Germans' available artillery 
force, which was slight at that time, must be con- 
centrated elsewhere. Let those American amateurs 
come on ! There was trouble in store for them. 



BY THE CENTER 217 

When the 79th came down into the valley, a hill 
in front of Montfaucon was now on the sky-line, 
instead of the ruins of the town. There were hills 
all around them, while they were exposed in the 
valley bottom. To the right in the 4th Division's 
sector was the hill and village of Cuisy, high 
points in a series of irregular commanding slopes. 
On the left was the Cuisy Wood, as the eastern end 
of the Montfaucon woods was called. So they were 
between the two Cuisys. The Cuisy Wood was in 
the 79th's sector. The machine-gun nests there 
served notice of one of the disadvantages of open 
country when they began firing from the cover on 
the visible foe. Checked by this fire, and forced to 
take cover in shell-craters and any dead spaces 
available, the Eastern Coast men found that when- 
ever they showed themselves the air cracked and 
sung with bullets. This was the trouble that the 
Germans had in pickle for them; this was war in 
earnest. They were now without barrages. They 
could not close with the enemy in an abandoned rush 
through a screen of woodland: the enemy had all 
the woodland to himself. Moreover, they had to 
advance uphill over very treacherous ground. 

With the help of tanks and of the 37th exerting 
its pressure on the left, Cuisy Wood was taken 
after three hours' fighting; but valuable time had 
been lost. The center, striving to pass over the 



218 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

crest of Hill 294 in front of Montfaucon, was 
blown back by converging blasts from machine-guns. 
Cuisy and the ridges on the right, as threatening 
as those on the left, were not yet taken. The 79th 
was in an open area of interlocking fire, though in 
a lesser degree than the 28th in the valley of the 
Aire. There was confusion owing to errors which 
were not always those of the young officers and the 
men, only waiting in their willingness to go where 
they were told against any kind of resistance. One 
of the young officers, finding himself alone, as the 
morning mist lifted, in the midst of machine-gun 
nests, forced the gunners to surrender and to point 
out the location of sixteen other nests. 

In ratio to the importance of the thrust of the 
79th was the responsibility of its senior officers, 
regimental and brigade. They had come to test in 
the field their ability as professional soldiers; when 
the amount of fat they had accumulated on their 
bodies and in their minds would have its influence 
on their endurance and judgment. There was con- 
tradiction in commands; uncertainty in decisions; 
higher orders were not carried out. In one case the 
natural military initiative of a tank commander gave 
the word to advance, which was all that the men 
wanted. Instead of reserves being sent in to keep 
the jump on the enemy by swift taking of positions, 
he was allowed time to recover his morale and 



BY THE CENTER 219 

bring reinforcements and machine-guns into posi- 
tion. 

Corps was displeased with this hesitation; Army 
equally so. They still had their eyes on the distant 
goal that they had set for the day's end. The 79th 
was told to press on at dusk and that it was expected 
to reach Nantillois and its full objective during the 
night. This, of course, required only the writing 
of a message. Without artillery support a regiment 
made a brave and fruitless attempt against a deluge 
of hand-grenades and interlocking machine-gun fire. 
During the night the division commander relieved a 
senior officer who had failed to carry out his orders, 
read lessons to others, and reorganized his com- 
mand. The road across the two miles of trench 
system and of shell-craters, being used by two divi- 
sions, despite the work of the engineers was wholly 
unequal to demands. As it passed over a ridge the 
trucks, sinking into sloughs which seemed to have 
no bottom, were frequently blocked in the ascent. 

The 79th had two battalions of artillery up when 
it attacked the next morning. Now it had its 
" second wind." The men were given rein. Prac- 
tically without shields, neither shells nor hand- 
grenades nor bullets could stay their progress. On 
the right they began driving ahead under the 
flanking machine-guns of Cuisy before dawn at 4 
A.M. On the left they started at 7 A.M. Their 



220 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

only liaison with their flanks was by mounted mes- 
senger, as their motorcycles were of no service until 
Montfaucon was reached. Their units intermingled 
with those of adjoining divisions, and advanced with 
them in that determined rush to " get there." By 
1 1 a.m. the 79th had men in Montfaucon with 
those of the 37th. A regiment was re-formed and 
ordered to flank Nantillois on the right, but now, 
going down the north slopes, it was in full view 
of the artillery from the whale-back. The left was 
stopped in the Beuge Wood. It had been a day 
of incessant and wearing effort of the same kind 
that the 37th had suffered. The road was in better 
condition, the troops received some though not suf- 
ficient food. A hundred burros were invaluable in 
bringing up ammunition. 

■ The next day being the critical 28th, the orders 
were for the 79th to exert itself to the utmost. It 
was still advancing in country perfectly open to view 
from the whale-back and its covering positions. In 
the morning the regiments which had been in re- 
serve, now being in front, proved that woods fight- 
ing was no monopoly by cleaning up all the machine- 
gun nests in the Beuge Wood and storming the 
ridge beyond Hill 268, and taking Nantillois be- 
fore noon. Then they were re-formed and given a 
little time for rest, — if rest was the word for hug- 
ging cover under incessant shell-fire. With the aid 



BY THE CENTER 221 

of tanks two attacks were made on the Ogons Wood 
beyond Nantillois under the German artillery fire 
from the whale-back, which was at close quarters 
and as accurate as the plunging machine-gun fire 
which accompanied it. 

The two tanks, so inadequate for their task, did 
not go far before both were hit. The infantry came 
near enough to the Ogons to realize that at the ratio 
of the increasing resistance our survivors who 
reached it would be hopelessly unequal to taking 
the machine-guns firing from its edge. Withdrawal 
was necessary to the south slopes of the crest in the 
rear, Hill 274, if the troops in their present position 
were not to be offered as sacrifice to the nests of 
artillery the enemy now had in position. Undaunted 
by the shell-fire on the road, the transport was able 
that night to reach Montfaucon, which was kept 
under such a heavy bombardment that there was no 
going farther without blocking the road with wreck- 
age. Though in a trance of weariness, carrying 
parties brought the food and other supplies three 
miles through the zone of shell-fire to the front. 

A willing horse was still to be driven for another 
day. The 79th was to be sent against the slopes 
of the whale-back. Morning revealed the enemy's 
artillery in still greater force; and there was mock- 
ery for the men as they breasted it in the sight of 
a German observation balloon, lazily floating above 



222 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the whale-back and directing the guns in firing on 
any parties who might have found ravines or slopes 
out of sight of observers from the heights. All day 
the left strove for gains in fitful attacks, and gained 
some three hundred yards. The right, in a deter- 
mination that shell-fire could not balk, reached the 
edge of the Ogons Wood. That was something; 
courage's final defiance in its exhaustion, before the 
thin line, which had looked into the recesses where 
the hidden machine-guns opened upon them, with- 
drew to their former position. The 79th was " ex- 
pended," to use the military phrase; and the mean- 
ing of that was in the hollow eyes of pasty faces and 
in dragging footsteps. On the 30th its part was 
that of the other divisions from the Meuse to the 
Forest, hugging the pits it had dug under shell-fire. 
In the afternoon it was relieved by the veteran 3rd 
Division. 

Having brought the account of the battle down 
to the standstill which closed the first stage, we may 
now turn our attention to the American divisions 
which were engaged with Allied armies in other 
decisive attacks of this crucial period. 



XIII 

OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 

New York and the South on the British front — Up the Somrae 
valley in the wake of the Australians — The Saint-Quentin 
Canal tunnel — Another ambitious plan — The simplicity of 
success in the attack of the 30th Division — The Pickett's 
charge of the 27th — A melee on the open slopes — In which 
the Australians take a hand — The German hinge at Bony 
holds — Australia carries on — The western front in movement 
— The British again in Le Cateau — Our part in the advance 
to Valenciennes. 

The Scotch thrift of Sir Douglas Haig, in face of 
the demand for our divisions in our own sector and 
at other points along the line, had been able to 
retain two of the ten divisions which had been 
trained in the British sector: the 27th, or " Orions," 
National Guard of New York under command of 
Major-General John F. O'Ryan; and the 30th, or 
" Old Hickory," National Guard of the Southern 
mountain states, under command of Major-General 
Edward M. Lewis. These two, forming our Sec- 
ond Corps under Major-General George W. Read, 
were to have a spectacular part in the attack of 
September 29th against the Hindenburg line on 
the thirty-mile front between Cambrai and Saint- 

223 



224 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Quentin, which was to be the next of the thrusts 
in the development of the general offensive move- 
ment which decided the war. 

Second Corps Headquarters had been from the 
time of its organization in the British area. Neither 
division had served anywhere else than with the 
British. They had been isolated from the associa- 
tion of the American army in a world of their own 
within the British world. It was well that they 
should be there; that if we were to have divisions 
detached from our army some should be contribut- 
ing their style of English to that spoken by English, 
Scotch, and Irish, by Canadians, Australians, New 
Zealanders, and South Africans. 

On August 30th-September ist the two fought 
side by side for the first time as divisions in the 
Ypres salient offensive. They advanced for the 
depth of a mile, the 27th until its outposts were on 
the famous Kemmel Hill which the German attacks 
had won in the preceding April, and the 30th taking 
the village of Voormezeele. They were now with- 
drawn and sent into training to digest the les- 
sons of their first battle and to learn in practice 
maneuvers how to cooperate with tanks. After 
that post-graduate course they might be considered 
"shock" divisions, having the freshness of new 
troops plus an instructive experience. When they 
received their next order to move, they knew that 




MAP NO. G 
LINES BEACHED BY GERMAN AND ALLIED OFFENSIVES 

1918. 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 225 

they were to be used as such; they were going into 
a " big fight." 

Late in September they started across the old 
Somme battlefield, which the Germans had devas- 
tated in their retreat in the late winter of 19 17 in 
face of the Anglo-French offensives. Here the re- 
sults of war on the largest integral area in France 
were seen at their worst in a dismal, treeless land- 
scape, pitted by the bursts of the countless shells 
fired in the Somme and Cambrai battles and the 
fighting in the period between them, and in the tidal 
wave of the great German offensive of March, 19 18, 
which overflowed the desert of their making. The 
subsoil, having been mixed with the loam that once 
nourished succulent pasturage and rich fields of 
grain, now responded to sun and moisture in a sub- 
tropical growth of weeds and grass in a grizzly 
carpet, variegated by the gaping wounds in the earth 
of crumbling trench walls and great mine craters. 
Deserted tanks, and remnants of sheet-iron dugout 
roofs and of gun-carriages and caissons recalled as 
the debris of a dead world ghostly memories to all 
British soldiers, for at one time or another all had 
fought there, enduring the powers of destruction 
that made the wreckage. 

Troops marching in this area, where man had at 
such labor and cost imitated the forces of earth- 
quakes, volcanoes, and of chaos, found few billets. 



226 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The villages were mostly level with the roads. 
Temporary buildings, with corrugated iron roofs 
and tar-paper walls, which would be called " shacks," 
had risen as the landmarks of pioneer hospitality. 
The two divisions marching toward the sound 
of guns through the silence where there was 
neither woman nor child living could people it 
with what reflections they chose on their way to 
battle. 

They were attached to the Australian Corps, 
which was company to their taste. There were no 
better soldiers than the " Aussies." Our men liked 
them not only for this but for other qualities which 
have a man-to-man appeal when men from the ends 
of the earth meet. In the coming attack we were 
to have more intimate reasons for liking them: 
the reasons born of the gratitude which one 
brave man owes to another who does not hesitate 
at hell's door to come to his aid when he is hard 
pressed. 

Beginning with the Anglo-French offensive on 
August 8th, the five divisions of the Australians in 
their " leap-frogging " advance — and they were very 
expert at "leap-frogging" — had not been out of 
line as a Corps until they had fought their way clear 
across the devastated region from the high-water 
mark of the German tidal wave of March to the 
point from which it had started. In the free stride 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 227 

which they had brought overseas from their island 
continent thousands of miles away, now guided by a 
veteran's wisdom and cunning, they had won back 
all they had fought for on these Somme fields with 
an enemy whose measure they had always taken — 
an enemy who they knew now could never fight on 
the offensive again. They had suffered for four 
years the fatigue, the shell-fire, the machine-gun fire, 
the gas, which our army was to know for a brief 
period of intensity. Long service and army 
discipline, accepted as a means to an end, had 
no more influence in making them militaristic 
than a course in boxing changes the anatomy 
of the kangaroo. They were ever the Austra- 
lians. 

Though the British had regained what they had 
lost in the spring, they were only back before the 
line to which Hindenburg had given his name, after 
he came with his Ludendorff from their victories in 
the east to prove that the western front was not 
necessarily the grave of German military reputa- 
tions. German staff experts had chosen the ground 
which they had fortified at leisure behind their old 
Bapaume defenses during the winter of 19 16-19 1 7. 
German industry was then at its height, and German 
material was ample to carry out the plans for that 
elaborate system which was advertised by German 
propaganda as impregnable. In those days when 



228 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

all offensives in the west had failed, many military 
experts were inclined to accept this view. 

The portion of the Hindenburg line, which the 
27th and 30th Divisions were to attack had a' -dis- 
tinctive character which might well relate its con- 
quest to an action by such an integral force as our 
Second Corps, attached to another army. For six 
thousand yards the Saint-Quentin Canal, opened in 
Napoleon's time and used until the beginning of the 
war, runs in practically a straight line north and 
south under a ridge, whose crest, from the piling 
of the spoils of excavation, is almost as regular as 
an enormous parapet. The open canal being un- 
fordable, this section, obviously inviting attack, was 
given particular attention in preparing the artificial 
defenses which the ground and the tunnel itself 
favored. The thickness of the earth over the stone 
arch was such that at no point had the largest 
caliber shell the slightest chance of successful pene- 
tration. In the tunnel, lighted by electricity, the 
number of reserves which could be accommodated 
was regulated by the extent of the wooden platforms 
laid across from wall to wall. It was said that 
there was room enough provided for a full division 
of infantry, which, while being entertained by mov- 
ing pictures to while away idle hours, would be per- 
fectly secure from any bombardment until such 
time as their services were required, when they had 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 229 

prompt egress to their places assigned for a crisis 
through the openings to the reverse slope of 
the higher irregular crest in front. It was a 
most comfortable and adaptable arrangement, 
for which the French a century ago had done the 
spading. 

On the crest in front of the tunnel, of course, none 
of the provisions in dugouts, traverses, strong points, 
and barbed wire of a thoroughgoing trench system 
was lacking. In front of this crest over which the 
main Hindenburg line ran, at a distance of a thou- 
sand yards, was another ridge, which formed the 
first or outpost line. Any troops who took this for- 
ward line must move down an apron in full view of 
the trenches of the main system, in range of its 
machine-guns and rifles, and under its observation 
for the direction of artillery fire, which of course 
had this apron accurately plotted. Between the 
two ridges, utilizing the ravines, sunken roads, and 
irregularities of ground, the Germans had deep 
communication trenches, which, with the passages 
out of the tunnel, further connected up the system 
in facilities for the swift utilization of their troops 
in making the most of all the details of natural and 
artificial advantage of a position which had on its 
flanks the unfordable canal. But the defenses had 
not been well kept up, partly as a result of the 
deterioration of German industry in digging, and 



230 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

more largely because of Ludendorff's commitment 
to mobile warfare by his March offensive. 

I recollect that the first news we had at Army 
Headquarters in the Meuse-Argonne of the prog- 
ress of the Second Corps said that our troops and 
the Australians had surrounded a division of Ger- 
mans. In view of what happened, this report now 
has a tragic mockery. The plan of the attack was 
made by the Australian Corps. The 30th Division 
was to be on the right; it went into position on the 
forward ridge, which in its sector was not as ex- 
posed as in that of the 27th. When the New 
Yorkers went into position, they faced the unpleas- 
ant fact that the British whom they relieved had 
not advanced beyond their own old outpost line. 
[This meant that they must make a preliminary 
attack on September 27th in order to gain their 
assigned jumping-off place for the main attack on 
the 29th. Their daylight charge went home in gal- 
lant fashion, but, exposed, when they reached the 
crest, to machine-gun fire and to the blasts of artil- 
lery fire from behind the tunnel, they fought all day 
on the Knoll and among the ruins of the buildings 
of Gillemont and Quennemont farms. In and out 
of trenches, " mopping up " machine-gun nests only 
to have others reappear from sunken roads and 
subterranean passages which were said to lead back 
to the canal tunnel itself, they paid heavy casualties 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 231 

for a persistence which left them that night and the 
next day hugging the slopes with the crest still un- 
mastered. 

It was not on the cards that the main attack, 
which was only one of a sequence in the general 
offensive movement, should be delayed on this ac- 
count. What was to have been taken in a small bite 
must now be taken in a big bite. The first ridge 
would be rolled under in the mighty wave which 
was then to sweep down the apron and through 
the barbed wire and trenches up the slopes 
and over the crest of the main ridge and of the 
tunnel and on into the open country beyond. The 
fighting vigor of our Second Corps, nursed in train- 
ing for such a purpose, was to be expended in one 
morning's tremendous effort; and at noon the 3rd 
and 5th Australian Divisions were to pass through 
our two divisions and to continue the advance with 
all possible speed on the heels of the broken enemy. 
For the American was not the only ambitious staff 
when it took to marking objectives on a map. Most 
ambitious of all was Marshal Foch. Our two divi- 
sions had all the " Don Acks," or divisional artil- 
lery, of the Australians, a total, with the Corps 
artillery, of 438 guns, or one for every forty feet 
of their front, to make their shields; and beside an 
array of British tanks the only American heavy tank 
unit in France. With the American divisions' artil- 



232 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

lery brigades, which had never seen the British 
front, supporting other divisions in the Meuse- 
Argonne offensive, who shall say that there was not 
cooperation among the Allies? 

The attack of the 30th Division on the right of 
the Corps line against the Hindenburg position, on 
the morning of September 29th, was a complete suc- 
cess — a clean drive through for two miles and a 
half to its objectives. If the division's flank was 
not exposed as the 27th's was, if it had relatively 
better ground to traverse, without the handicap of 
having to take its jumping-off place before it began 
its real advance, this in no wise detracts from the 
honor that these men of the Southern mountains, 
ninety-five per cent of whom were of Anglo-Saxon 
origin, did their forebears in fighting as a part of 
the British army. They won more Congressional 
Medals of Honor, the highest tribute our nation 
can pay any officer or man for gallantry in the field, 
than any other division. All that they did was in 
character with the best traditions of their grand- 
fathers who had fought under Lee and Stonewall 
Jackson. They had named their division " Old 
Hickory " in honor of another Jackson who was a 
Southern hero; and hickory is hard, tough, and 
springy wood. Called " poor whites " by the heed- 
less, they were rich in the qualities that count in 
battle. There were companies of them which were 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 233 

sixty per cent illiterate when they came to camp, 
which calls for thought on the part of the traveler 
in the " richest country in the world " who sees 
their faces at railroad stations or in their simple 
houses in the mountains. 

Character and education, as we are not too often 
reminded, are not the same; and these men have 
character, which is sound in the warp and the woof, 
though it lacks frills and misses the motion pictures 
'round the corner from the soda fountain. They 
were capable of education, too, not only in reading, 
writing, and arithmetic which they were taught in 
the schools established for them, but in military 
technique. What they learned they learned well. 
They did not think that any substitute " would do 
just as well " when it would not. If they were told 
to put out panels for the planes, they put them out, 
and in the way that they were told. Their disci- 
pline was in the devotion of the kind which kept the 
poorly fed, equipped, and clothed Southern armies 
resisting Northern power for four years, and the 
officers who led them were of a democracy which 
has its test in more than mere platitudes. 

They believed in their officers, but maintained 
their attitude of self-respect, that individualism de- 
veloped from their surroundings, which separated 
them by as wide a gulf from regiments drawn from 
the swarming streets of a great city as could well 



234 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

exist in a country speaking a common tongue. With 
their drawling voices and romantic views, and their 
lean figures and clear eyes, it seemed to me that they 
gave a certain atmosphere of simple knightliness 
even to the processes of modern war. Their con- 
scientious attention to all the details of instructions 
which taken together make the whole of battle effi- 
ciency, their accuracy of thought as accurate as their 
shooting, the confident hunter's zest with which they 
went straight at their foe, were contributing factors 
of more importance than any good fortune in their 
swift and positively brilliant advance through the 
defenses of one of the strongest positions on the 
western front. With surprisingly small losses, no 
day's work of any division of the American army 
deserves more praise than the Hickory's, both be- 
cause of their own character and of that of their 
task. They did not think that they had done 
much. Their admiration was all for the British 
veterans on their right who had adroitly managed 
a crossing of the canal on rafts and had kept pace 
with their own movement. 

The story of the 27th on the left, for the very rea- 
son that it was not the kind of success which moves 
the pencilings on schedule time on the map in keep- 
ing with staff plans, was to exhibit those qualities 
of the courage of individuals and groups in distress 
against odds, of which we stand in awe as the 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 235 

supreme tribute to men as men in battle. The re- 
ports showed that all was going well at first. Under 
cover of foggy mist, which was most friendly in 
hiding the advance down the slope of both divisions, 
the 27th started off in the same admirable fashion 
as the 30th, following close behind its barrage. By 
noon not only was the 30th reported in Nauroy, 
beyond the canal, but troops of the 27th had been 
seen in Gouy and Le Catelet, practically one town, 
on the far side of the main ridge. Aviators later 
saw detachments of the Orions moving forward and 
Germans who were not convoys of prisoners moving 
in the opposite direction — a most suggestive spec- 
tacle. Divisional communications had been cut. 
The division staff could only wait on results, not 
knowing what orders to give. Such command as 
remained was with the leaders of the elements, their 
liaison broken, which were fighting their hearts out. 
There could be no more doubt of the 27th's capa- 
bility than of the fearful situation in which it was 
placed. The New York National Guard had been 
known as among the best state troops, having re- 
ceived liberal support, while its commander was a 
permanent officer on the state's pay-roll, who gave 
all his time to the organization. On the Mexican 
border it had won high praise. Later, when the 
New Yorkers were given an integral division in our 
army in the war with Germany, both in their train- 



236 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

mg at home and in France and then in their fighting 
in the Ypres salient, they enhanced their reputation. 
When I went over the field of the action of the 
29th, I was struck with amazement at the results 
expected of them, and with awe as I visualized their 
effort, which like Pickett's charge owes its place in 
history not to the wisdom of generals but to valor — 
and that the valor of intelligence. While the British 
were to advance on the right of the 30th, they were 
not to succeed in advancing on the left of the 27th, 
where the canal, emerging from the tunnel's north- 
ern end, bends to the west, against the direction of 
the attack, across the Macquincourt valley, whose 
wall opposite the tunnel entrance has ravines and 
hillocks for cover. This area, covered with big 
shell-craters, sometimes half-filled in by other shell- 
bursts, included sections of communication trenches, 
machine-gun emplacements, dugouts, snarls of barbed 
wire, all in a chaotic disorder which had no system 
to the casual glance, except that every square yard 
of it was suited to desperate resistance by skilful sol- 
diers. The 27th's left was to sweep across this val- 
ley over the ridge, and then throw out forces of 
exploitation for protection of its flank in face of the 
well-intrenched unfordable canal and the high 
ground behind it; after the canal tunnel had been 
taken, other forces were to swing north, while the 
British Third Corps, which had not been sent in a 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 237 

frontal attack against the open canal positions — over 
ground infinitely more difficult than at the other end 
of the tunnel, — was, with the aid of this support, 
to " join up." It could hardly be said of that plan, 
as of many others for swinging open the double 
doors against trench systems, that it even looked 
well on paper; but it was the plan adopted after 
thorough consideration by practical soldiers. 

The Germans, of course, had information that an 
offensive was in preparation on this front, and that 
it would include the ridge over the canal tunnel. 
With their reserves in the tunnel ready, they would 
wait on its development before sending them to the 
point where they would do the most service. 
Anticipating their prevision, our command gave 
instructions that as we reached the openings in the 
tunnel they were to be guarded, thus preventing the 
egress of the Germans except as prisoners from 
their great dugout, in the same manner that trench 
dugouts were breached in an attack. That this 
could not be done in face of the numbers of the 
enemy emerging after our first wave had passed is 
not a criticism of the men who fought all day to 
do it. 

The " get there " spirit which animated all our 
divisions was supreme in the men of the 27th. As 
they descended the slope, after sweeping over the 
forward ridge, their figures distinct as the smoke- 



238 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

screen and the fog lifted, the German artillery sent 
a curtain of shell-fire, which kept pace with their 
progress, through the curtain protecting them. 
Machine-guns from the high ground across the open 
canal were turned on their flank with increasing fire; 
and their own tanks, on which they relied so largely 
for protection, were to suffer severe casualties from 
accurate enemy defense. Each infantry unit had no 
thought except to keep on going. Every survivor 
had his face set toward the goal. The forces as- 
signed to secure the openings in the tunnel and to 
" mop up," straggling over the uneven ground and 
raked by machine-gun fire, could not advance against 
the stubborn resistance developed by the enemy 
emerging from his hiding-places after our barrage 
had lifted. On the right the men of the 27th, striv- 
ing to keep up with the 30th, drove into the main 
trench system about the ruined village of Bony, on. 
the crest in front of the tunnel, and for all the 
accumulated effort of the enemy to throw them back 
from this vital hinge of his resistance, maintained 
their footing in a struggle that lasted all day. Pass- 
ing over the northern end of the ridge, on the left, 
a battalion of the first wave, regardless of fire, 
reached the Le Catelet-Gouy villages, their final ob- 
jective. It was their movement that the aeroplane 
observers had seen going in the opposite direction 
from German reserves coming into action. That 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 239 

battalion had kept faith with the plan which re- 
quired swift action to make the most of the initiative 
gained, before the enemy could mobilize for defense 
after the shock of the attack. 

Naturally it had soon been apparent to the Ger- 
man command that there was no advance by the 
British Third Corps on the 27th's left up to the 
canal. Obviously this was the opening for reserves 
to frustrate the offensive. The German soldiers 
gradually losing morale as a whole were now to 
show their old form in one of those flashes of 
desperate counter-attack and resistance which was 
worthy of their regulation at its fiercest. It had 
always been characteristic of them that they fought 
best when they were winning; when the advantage 
was theirs. These veterans swarming out of the 
openings of the tunnel and up the Macquincourt 
valley on our exposed flank had their blood up. 
This was their Hindenburg line. They had been 
told that it was unassailable, and that any attack 
against it would break into confusion which would 
be their prey, an opportunity which was compensa- 
tion for their retreats of the last month, arousing 
afresh their professional zeal in applying, in a field 
of a kind with which they were as familiar as prairie 
dogs with their warrens, all their skill in tactics of 
cunning infiltration under the support of their 
machine-guns. They were as old hounds who had 



240 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

been having hard hunting of late with little success, 
and whose appetites were whetted by the sight of a 
quarry. 

The report that we had an enemy division sur- 
rounded was probably founded on the observation 
of the counter-attacking parties of Germans ob- 
served between the battalion in Gouy and our main 
force. Wholly enveloped, the groups of this gal- 
lant unit — a Pickett's charge which had kept going 
until the remnants were swallowed Up in the enemy's 
forces — could only surrender, when they saw gray 
uniforms on all sides, or, dodging from cover to 
cover, try to win their way back to their comrades. 
Other units, emerging into zones swept by unseen 
fire, sought any protection they could find. Others 
still tried to advance. " Mopping up " parties had 
to resist being " mopped up " themselves. The bat- 
tle became a melee in front of the Hindenburg line; a 
free-for-all, in and out of burrows and craters; their 
general must trust his men to fight in the spirit in 
which he had trained them; and thus they did fight. 
Plunging machine-gun fire and hand-grenades sought 
out the wounded in folds of the ground and pits, 
while bullets whistled overhead. No platoon knew 
to a certainty what its neighbor was doing. Some 
bold man sprang out of shell-craters to seek close 
quarters or to try to reach a machine-gun, only to 
fall back dead into his companion's arms. Groups 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 241 

found that they were being slowly exterminated by 
scattering bullets, while any movement in any direc- 
tion meant instant extermination. Always the spits 
of dust showed bullets coming in two directions — 
as ridge and valley wall looked down on them. The 
wonder is that they did not break into a panic. But 
that was not in the character of such men. On the 
contrary, they continued their efforts to advance. 
How many deeds of heroism, unseen by any ob- 
server, deserved Medals of Honor will never be 
known. 

If ever the determined faces of sturdy men com- 
ing up in reserve were welcome, they were those of 
the Australians, as they appeared for their part of 
the program — which was to " leap-frog " our troops 
and carry on the advance: to find that they had hot 
work in prospect from the moment they passed the 
tape we had strung for our jumping-off line. Our 
battalion in Le Catelet having been effectively cut 
off, the battalion which had kept its footing in the 
Hindenburg line at Bony stayed on, mingled with 
the oncoming Australians, for that night and an- 
other day of fighting. The Australians who had 
passed through the 30th Division, on its objective 
at Nauroy, for a farther advance to the next village 
of Joncourt, were obliged to relinquish their gains 
in order to bend back their line diagonally to join 
up with the mixed Australians and New Yorkers at 



242 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Bony. The German hinge at that point was not 
to be broken until the next day; north of Bony the 
27th's line that night slanted back, in order to face 
as far as possible the murderous fire on its exposed 
flank, to the outpost line from which they had been 
unable to advance. The 27th had suffered 4,000 
casualties since September 27th. Now, as fast as 
units could be gathered and re-formed, it was with- 
drawn for reorganization, as was the 30th, leaving 
the Australians to finish the task. The fact that our 
Meuse-Argonne offensive had slowed down, and 
that at other points the progress of the general 
Allied movement was being stayed, may account, 
judging from German reports I have read, for a 
return of German staff confidence which was im- 
parted to the German veterans, who, after their 
brilliant and savage use of their amazing opportuni- 
ties against the 27th, kept up their resistance point 
by point for four days before the Australians had 
gained the complete objective set for the 27th on 
September 29th. It is never a pleasant task for 
any body of troops to have to do the work as- 
signed to another; but the Australian staff had 
made the plan, and the " Aussies " accepted the 
legacy we had left with a spirit in keeping with their 
comradeship for the Americans. From our staff 
and our army, from the state of New York and 
our country, as well as from the men of the 27th, 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 243 

ever willing to give it with full hearts, they deserve 
the tribute due to their bravery and fellow- 
ship. 

I may add that this was the Australians' last 
action. After thirteen months of continuous fight- 
ing they were sent into winter quarters. The 
men who had been out from home since 19 14 — 
and the Americans who were homesick after three 
months in France can imagine what this meant — 
were just starting on their first home leave when 
the armistice came. May the recollection of how 
they fought at our side in a war to end war keep 
the friendship of the two peoples secure. 

On the night of October 5th the 30th Division, 
which had suffered far less than the 27th, relieved 
the Australians. The job was finished; on this 
part as on the rest of the British front, the once 
glorious Hindenburg line was left behind, sud- 
denly become a somewhat frowsy irrelevance of 
deserted trenches, dugouts, shell-craters, and tangles 
of barbed wire. With its passing one knew that, 
for the northern half of the front, there was no 
question of stopping; careful, methodical planning, 
mindful of the necessary vigorous thrusts at the 
key positions of railway centers and canal and 
river defenses, would irresistibly sweep the enemy 
back to the Meuse line, while the slower movement 
M down below " — as the French and American 



244 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

fronts seemed from the north — would question his 
ability to stand even there. 

Not that there was to be any spectacular rush 
about the movement, though one looked expectantly 
at the fitness of the British cavalry, which was always 
kept ready; the German staff could be expected to 
handle itself in this its most serious emergency. 
The spectacular and amazing thing was the steady, 
unruffled forward movement of millions of men, 
glacier-like in its assuredness. The temper of vic- 
tory revealed itself in the eyes and bearing of the 
men who had waited four years, and who now saw 
Ypres disengaged, Lille on the point of recovery, 
Lens, Cambrai, Saint-Quentin restored to France. 
Americans might feel out of place in the midst of 
rejoicings, the depth of which they could not 
measure because they had not known the suffering 
which had gone before. 

The Second Corps was now to take part in the 
advance of one French and three British armies 
which, by November ist, was to expand until the 
whole line from the sea to the Argonne was in 
motion. From north of Cambrai to south of Saint- 
Quentin the line was to reach its apex before Le 
Cateau in the attack of October 8th-ioth; on the 
14th the Franco-Belgian and British attack north of 
Lille was to start bringing the line up to this level; 
from the 17th to the 25th the southern British and 



OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 245 

French armies would again take up the offensive to 
the gates of Valenciennes, while the French armies 
"around the corner" on the right would have 
passed over the Saint-Gobain bastion and straight- 
ened out the corner. 

The plan of the advances in which the Second 
Corps took part was simple. The enemy had none 
but hastily organized defenses, and if he were 
pushed hard enough he would go. So the artillery 
was to be moved as far forward as possible to give 
the necessary protection to the infantry; the attack 
would start all along the thirty-mile front for gen- 
erous objectives, and could be expected to go fairly 
well for two or three days, when stubborn resist- 
ance at various points would make it necessary to 
halt the advance until supplies were brought up 
and the resistance overcome in another general 
effort. The artillery declared that this was getting 
to be too much of an infantry war, nothing counting 
except keeping up with their giddy romp across 
fields. The infantry might have replied that they 
were pushing on so fast in order to keep the Ger- 
mans from destroying the roads and light railways 
which the artillery and transport would be using.\ 
Not that I wish to imply that the infantry found it 
a giddy romp; there were always the machine-guns 
and the front-line artillery batteries, and, especially 
on the first day of the attack, a considerable quan- 



246 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tity of " h-vic " shells, as they were called on the 
British front, from the large-calibre guns which were 
protecting the withdrawal of field-guns and material. 
There was no question, however, of the with- 
drawal. When the 30th Division, after two days 
of waiting on the two miles of Corps front which 
the Australians had handed over, started forward 
on October 8th along the south edge of the Roman 
Road to Le Cateau, it was able to cover three miles 
by noon, taking the fair-sized towns . of Brancourt 
and Premont, and a number of solid farmhouses 
and small copses, on the way. Enough guns were 
moved up over virtually undamaged roads to per- 
mit another start at dawn on the 9th ; and the end 
of that day found the Southerners four miles farther 
on and in possession of the important railway center 
and large town of Busigny, which the enemy had 
relinquished practically without a struggle. Another 
mile was gained on the 10th, and the division line 
brought to the Selle river, which was not much of 
a river in the eyes of the Americans, but on which 
the enemy had obviously intended to call a halt. 
The railway yards in front of Le Cateau, in the 
sector of the Thirteenth British Corps on the left, 
gave violent resistance to any further progress on 
that side; the rearward movement of enemy field- 
guns had apparently stopped, to judge from the 
quantity of shell-fire and gas which now came over; 



• OVER THE HINDENBURG LINE 247 

and wQtried intelligence officers were doing their 
best to decipher the mystery of prisoners from eleven 
German divisions who had been taken on the two- 
mile front. Incidentally, it should be said that the 
Southerners had gathered in 1,900 Germans in 
three days, which was more than their share of the 
total of 12,000 prisoners captured by the three 
British armies. 

One who knew the dreary waste of the Somme 
battlefield, or indeed the level ruins of any part of 
the old trench line, might well rub his eyes when he 
came into this fresh landscape, where the South- 
erners seemed as much at home as if they had never 
seen mountains. One had forgotten, it seemed as if 
one had never known, that you could have war in 
a country where women and children walked about 
the streets, and lived in intact houses, and even went 
to shop, to school, and to mass. A Corps officer 
who had worked with Hoover in Belgium found a 
familiar task in distributing food to the four thou- 
sand civilians in the sector. 

Sterner fighting was to follow from October 17th 
for the weakened divisions, which had received no 
replacements to bring them up from half strength, 
and which could therefore, together, take over little 
more than a mile of front. Starting from the Selle 
river south of Le Cateau, they met a stubborn resist- 
ance until the stand made by the enemy in that town, 



248 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

which had seen a fierce British resistance in 19 14 
in the retreat from Mons, was overcome by the 
Thirteenth British Corps ; then our Southerners and 
New Yorkers, having advanced four miles in three 
days, were relieved and sent back to the dreary 
Somme fields east of Amiens. Had it been neces- 
sary to fight a way into Germany, they would prob- 
ably have been called on again for their manly share. 
As it was, they were the only American troops, 
aside from scattered units, which were not to be 
gathered into the fold of the main American forces. 
That this isolation did not please them is under- 
standable; but I suspect that it was good for them. 
There could not be the exaggeration of their part in 
the final victory which there might have been if 
they had had American food and had seen none but 
American activity about them. If officially the 
British made much of them, they realized that it 
was not only for what they had done but in honor 
of the country which had sent them forth to fight 
for the common cause. 



XIV 

DISENGAGING RHEIMS 

The race-horse division in another spearhead action — Regulars 
and Marines — A division that had learned coordination — 
Trying for Blanc-Mont — One attack that cost nothing — An 
exhausted division reinforced by the new Southwestern divi- 
sion — Which keeps up with the Marines — The 36th learns 
fast — And pursues the enemy to the Aisne. 

Ever the demand from all parts of the Allied line 
was for American troops. Their speed in attack had 
become a recognized factor in the plans of the 
unified command, which moved them about with an 
inconsiderate rapidity which was hard on shoe- 
leather and most uncomfortable. The very sight of 
the soldiers of our young army moving into a sector 
of their line before an action quickened the spirits 
of the veterans of the old armies. 

If Sir Douglas Haig had two American divisions 
for storming the Hindenburg line, then General 
Gouraud, whose Fourth Army had broken the 
trench line for gains west of the Argonne Forest, in 
conjunction with our advance between the Forest 
and the Meuse, must have two divisions for the 
next step in the general offensive movement which 
was to disengage Rheims, in a drive northward 

249 



250 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

from Somme-Py to the Aisne. These two included 
the 2nd, Marines and Regulars, the race-horse divi- 
sion, which had the longest experience in France of 
any regular division except the pioneers of the 1st. 
Our sore need of its veteran skill in the Meuse- 
Argonne had to yield to an urgent request, which 
amounted to a command, from higher authority. 
Naturally, the 2nd would have preferred being with 
our own army; but wherever it was it would fight 
well. It was to add to its laurels now in the rolling 
country of Champagne, where the deep strata of 
chalk under the light sub-soil formed solid walls 
for defenses, accrued through four years of digging, 
as distinct on the background of the landscape as 
the white tape on a tennis court or the base-lines on 
a baseball diamond. Soldiers in blue or khaki, after 
fighting in this region in rainy weather, looked like 
men who had just come from work in a flour- 
mill, where they had been wrestling with the splash- 
ing mill-wheel. It was a custom to rub helmets with 
the chalk of parapets for the sake of invisibility. 

The action in which the 2nd was again, as on 
July 1 8th, to play the part of the spearhead was to 
cut the Rheims salient by thrusts on the sides, much 
as one would push in the roofless walls of a house 
on a man within, which is much more reasonable 
than trying to break up through the floor to get at 
him. The third German offensive of May had all 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 251 

but encircled Rheims from the west; had the last and 
unsuccessful offensive attained its end of a deep ad- 
vance east of the city, Rheims would have been far 
behind the enemy's line. As it was, heroic resistance 
had saved the city, at the price of leaving it for four 
months in a salient as pronounced and as dangerous 
as the Ypres salient, which must be reversed and 
then broken. The reversal which would put the 
enemy in turn into a salient was started west of 
Rheims, on September 30th, by General Berthelot's 
Fifth Army; in a three days' advance his line, pivot- 
ing on the city, swung up from an east-west direc- 
tion to a northwest-southeast direction, effectively 
turning the salient inside out. The line now ran 
for some twenty miles southeast past the edge 
of Rheims, turned east through Champagne for 
another fifteen miles to Auberive, and then, as a 
result of General Gouraud's advances from Septem- 
ber 26th, turned northeast to the northern end of 
the Argonne. A simultaneous attack by Berthelot, 
on the west face of this flat arc with a thirty-mile 
chord, and by Gouraud on the east face, would send 
the enemy scurrying back to a maximum depth of 
twenty-five miles to the line of the Aisne river, which 
here runs roughly east and west. 

From just north of Somme-Py, in the center of 
the up-slanting east face of the salient, the 2nd 
Division, attached with French divisions to the 



252 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Twenty-first Corps, was to strike over chalk ridges 
and through woods northwest toward Machault. 
The attack was first set for October 2nd, but was 
postponed while the division spent this day in clean- 
ing German recalcitrants out of a portion of the 
trench system taken over from a French division 
which had captured it. The Corps orders for the 
attack were then issued so late that there was not 
time to have them translated and written out, as the 
custom was, for the sake of accuracy which was con- 
sidered indispensable to the team-play of units; but 
they had to be sent orally to our two brigades. 

In the center of the field of attack was the Vipere 
Wood, which was known to hold many machine-gun 
nests. By a converging movement the Marine 
brigade was to pass this wood on the left, and the 
Regular brigade to pass it on the right in flank, and 
form line beyond it, — which was not a mission a 
general would assign to tyros who had not yet 
learned to maintain the liaison of their units in diffi- 
cult fighting. In order to go into position, the 
Regular brigade had a night march around the rear 
of the line. Happily the men of the 2nd Division 
had had experience of this sort of thing. They had 
gone in on the run at Chateau-Thierry, and again 
in the crucial drive at Soissons on July 18th. It had 
been said that they did things best in a hurry, which 
may have led to their being relied on as " hit-and- 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 253 

run "-experts; nevertheless they had an idea of 
their own that if they might have moved into line 
and looked over the ground a few hours before 
going into an attack, instead of charging when they 
were breathless from sprinting, they might have 
done equally well with slightly less nerve strain. 

As the French guides who were to meet the 
Regular brigade at dark and show it the way did 
not appear, which was a common failing with guides, 
the brigade had to grope about among shell-craters 
and communication trenches to find its jumping-off 
place, which was still partly occupied by the enemy. 
By 5 A.M. only six companies were in position; but 
by 5.50, the hour for attack, thanks to the owl's 
eyes and instinct of direction which seemed to be a 
part of the equipment of the 2nd, every company 
was up in order, ready for the charge. With tanks 
assisting against its machine-gun nests, they swept 
past the Vipere Wood. A loss of twenty per cent 
of their infantry did not interfere with their reach- 
ing their two-mile objective on schedule time at 8.30. 

The race-horse proclivities of the 2nd, having 
been developed on no level speedway but over all 
the hurdles of modern defense against all arms of 
fire, were accentuated by the rivalry of the Regular 
and Marine brigades. The Marine was the better 
brigade of the two. All the Marines say so. I 
agree with them. The Regular brigade was also 



254 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the better. All the Regulars say so. I agree with 
them. If the Marines were up to their objective, 
the Regulars must be; and if the Regulars were up 
the Marines must be, or die in the attempt. No 
ifs, or buts, or excuses of any kind except casualties 
were ever accepted in the 2nd for not advancing. 
And you must not lose life unskillfully, or your 
brigade might be convicted of not being as profes- 
sional as the other, — and that would be a disgrace. 
The 2nd had been fortunate in its commanders. 
Major-General Harbord, a Regular, had leaned 
backward toward the Marines; and Major-General 
Lejeune, a Marine officer, who was now in command, 
leaned backward toward the Regulars. They were 
wise men, occupied with making the 2nd the " best " 
division in the army. 

Despite the trouble it met on the way from cross- 
fire and machine-gun nests in the Somme-Py Wood, 
the Marine brigade was also up on schedule time at 
8.30. The two brigades had not been thinking 
much of their flanks; they were concerned in racing 
each other. While either considered the other in- 
capable of its own stride, neither thought that any 
brigade in the world except itself could keep pace 
with the other. They were not surprised to find 
that the French were not up on their flanks; and the 
fact that the French were not, interfered with the 
success of another advance planned for 1 1 A.M., 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 255 

unless the 2nd were to drive into a salient which 
increasing machine-gun fire indicated as an unpro- 
fessional effort, — suicide not being professional with 
the 2nd unless one brigade should make it a custom 
which the other would have to follow. 

Though the French on the right might hold up 
their end in a further attack before noon, there was 
no chance that the French on the left could: with 
the Marine front line more than two miles in ad- 
vance, the French were still occupied in trying to 
conquer the sinuous warrens of the Essen trench, 
which was acting an assassin's part in the rear of the 
Marines. Indeed, the Germans were counter- 
attacking, further intensifying the seriousness of the 
situation. The reserve regiment of Marines had 
other work to do than assisting the front-line regi- 
ment in a further advance. While its men, in 
helping the French division, were breaching dug- 
outs, using their bayonets, throwing and dodging 
bombs as they rushed around traverses and met 
counter-rushes in an infernal hand-to-hand wrestle, 
and sending out chalk-plastered Germans in torn 
uniforms to join the groups of prisoners and 
wounded coming from the front, Marshal Foch sent 
a telegram of congratulation to the Corps, with 
word to press the advance. 

At 4 p.m., when the reserve regiment of the 
Marines had finished its task in applying in savage 



256 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

hand-to-hand fighting, characteristic of the old days 
before open warfare became the rule, all its training 
in trench warfare, an order was given to obey that 
of the Marshal; but it hardly concerned the front 
regiment of Marines, which was without the sup- 
port of the reserve regiment, while the retarded 
French on the flank, still fighting hard for their 
gains, were well to the rear. The reserve regiment 
of the Regulars, passing through the front regiment, 
made three-quarters of a mile, where it met machine- 
gun fire from both flanks. At 7.30, the French on 
the left having made progress, the reserve regiment 
of Marines, passing through the front regiment, 
made another hard-won gain against flanking fire, 
and in the darkness had to repulse two counter- 
attacks. 

It had been a great day even for the 2nd Divi- 
sion, with four miles of advance and a toll of two 
thousand prisoners; a day of systematic and mas- 
terly fighting which had added to its list of honors 
that of forcing the Germans forever out of the deep 
maze of the Champagne trenches. The trucks and 
the rolling kitchens as well as the artillery, which 
had never been far behind the infantry, were up that 
night; and the ambulances, in keeping with the race- 
horse spirit, running close up to the front, had made 
a record in their expeditious care of the wounded, 
who had been gathered with a promptness, in the 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 257 

fields under fire, worthy of a show drill at maneuvers. 
For if we had any division which knew how, and 
had reasons of long service for knowing how, to 
coordinate all its branches in action, it was the divi- 
sion which had learned its lessons in the taking of 
Belleau Wood, Vaux, and Vauxcastille. 

It need not be said that the program was to 
continue the advance the next day; but the Germans 
had been preparing overnight to impede its fulfill- 
ment with something of the same ferocity they had 
shown in the Essen trench. As usual in these 
days, after the Allied attack had spent its initial 
momentum in breaking them out of their fortifica- 
tions, the Germans reacted by applying open war- 
fare tactics on a second line of resistance. While 
the French were striving to come up on both flanks, 
the whole line was being deluged with shells and 
machine-gun fire. On the afternoon of the first day, 
the Marines by their customarily swift tactics had 
taken a portion of Blanc-Mont — the adjective being 
used before the name, contrary to modern French 
fashion — a hill which ran back in an irregular shelf 
covered by patches of sparse woods. Well-made 
trenches, dugouts, and communicating trenches so 
easily dug and kept up in the firm chalk, were evi- 
dence of the German's appreciation of the hill's 
importance in the defense of their positions east of 
Rheims. 



258 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

A congeries of machine-gun nests on its west 
slope, which was still untaken, by its enfilade fire 
from our sector had stopped the advance of the 
French on the left. Without waiting for them, and 
with a view to clearing the way for them, the 
Marines on the afternoon of the 4th, supported by 
their artillery, attacked this position. They tested 
out its strength well enough, in face of withering 
blasts, to learn that they must devise another plan 
of assault. This was a wise precaution, as the event 
was to prove. They spent the night in tireless and 
canny preparations for the next day's effort. Early 
in the morning a battalion started over the ridge. 
They did not want for shields; and their confidence 
in the accuracy of their veteran artillery led them 
to keep close behind the smothering fire of the bar- 
rage with a speed and agility in the systematic 
advance of their units which made a record even for 
the race-horse division. The German machine- 
gunners, as they saw that hurricane of bursting 
shells approaching, rushed to cover, which they 
hugged in desperate and prayerful intimacy as it 
passed over them. They rose, to find that a human 
whirlwind in its train was upon them. Without a 
single casualty the battalion had taken 213 prisoners 
and 75 machine-guns. The thing seemed miracu- 
lous; but there were the machine-guns, and there 
were the startled Germans who had thrown up their 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 259 

hands. When I went over the ground, still littered 
with equipment and scattered cartridge cases, that 
commanded every avenue of approach, I had an 
example which might well be quoted in all future 
text-books of how speed and skill may get " the 
jump " on an enemy. Here was certainly something, 
not to tell the Marines, but for the Marines to tell 
those Regulars, who, holding a large section of the 
line, could respond that though they had no the- 
atrical exhibits to please the gallery gods they were 
having an affair of their own which might make any 
Marine thankful for his health's sake that he was 
climbing hills. 

On the right of the Regular brigade the French 
had not yet taken Medeah farm, which was a per- 
fect haven for machine-guns bearing on the Regu- 
lars' flank. The Germans, in this section, were fight- 
ing hard enough to atone for the easy surrender of 
their comrades on Blanc-Mont in their defense of 
the ridges in front of the village of Saint-Etienne-a- 
Arnes, the next landmark in the path of the 2nd's 
progress. The Marines found a thorn in the flesh 
in a strong point near Blanc-Mont, whose defenders 
refused to be stampeded. Enemy artillery fire was 
furious throughout the 5th. On the morning of the 
6th, at 6.30, under another hurricane barrage, a 
regiment of Regulars and one of Marines side by 
side set out to take the last ridge before Saint- 



26o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Etienne. This meant that something had to break. 
It was one of the occasions when professional spirit 
did not consider the folly of suicide, as the rival 
units charged side by side. They took the ridge 
with a loss that was estimated at thirty per cent, 
and dug in. The French on the left had forged 
ahead. Meanwhile, with the French on the right 
valiantly struggling against Medeah farm, and our 
Regulars checked, our line was at a sharp angle. 

It had been a grueling day for a division which 
notably never spared itself in its high-strung inten- 
sity; and four or five days seem to have been the 
limit of endurance for soldiers who were continu- 
ously fighting. Relief for the 2nd was due. On 
the night of the 6th the 36th Division, National 
Guard of Texas and Oklahoma, under command of 
Major-General William R. Smith, which was lately 
from home and had never been under fire before, 
began arriving. Its fresh and inexperienced bat- 
talions were now mixed with the tired battalions of 
the 2nd to learn the art of war at first hand from 
old masters, who included not only their comrades 
of the Regulars and Marines but the Germans in 
a very ugly mood. After a day of reorganizing and 
digging, while the French were in the outskirts of 
Saint-Etienne, the Marines on the left and a regi- 
ment of the 36th on the right charged Saint- 
JEtienne on the morning of the 8th. The French 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 261 

were reported to have patrols in the town, but a 
portion of it at least seemed to be very much in the 
hands of the enemy. At least his machine-gunners, 
in the course of their supple infiltrations, had estab- 
lished themselves in the adjoining cemetery, which 
gave them a free sweep of fire across the ground of 
our advance, which was open fields without any 
more cover than a house floor. For half a kilometer 
the men of the 36th kept their line even with the 
veterans. The Marines entered the town while the 
men of the 36th were still in the open. 

It was the Southwesterners' first taste of machine- 
gun nests. They had no standards of previous ex- 
perience for judgment as to the density of fire which 
would warrant a halt. Their orders were to keep 
on going; and they kept on. In front of them, as 
they crossed the open, was a wooded ravine. Our 
guns could not bombard it with any appreciable 
effect upon its nests, which were sending a tornado 
of bullets into the 36th's charge in addition to the 
shower of shells from the German guns. The 
Southwesterners who were meeting both bullets and 
shells for the first time did not fall back before this 
deadly combination of artillery and machine-gun 
fire, which would have dismayed hardened veterans 
at their best, until they had kept faith with Alamo 
traditions by losing a third of their numbers. 

The 2nd's engineers now came up for a fighting 



262 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

part in protecting our hard-pressed flanks. We 
withdrew our front to the town, which we held. 
Meanwhile, though the French had taken Medeah 
farm, the division's right was still well back of the 
line of Saint-Etienne. All day of the 9th was spent 
in re-forming our position after the see-sawing con- 
flict of the 8th; but the Germans, far from showing 
any signs of withdrawal, made a counter-attack on 
the French beyond Medeah farm and on our Regu- 
lars, who repulsed it with their rifle fire. 

The race-horse division, which had been hurried 
from the mud of the Saint-Mihiel sector without 
time to rest, had been doing a steeple-chase for nine 
days. Physical exhaustion claimed it for its own. 
As it withdrew, with casualties of 4,771 and the 
capture of 1,963 prisoners from eight German divi- 
sions, the Regulars and Marines and the French 
of the Twenty-first Corps had the satisfaction of 
knowing that German guns had fired their last shot 
at the cathedral and the ruins of the city of Rheims. 

The Texans and Oklahomans who now took up 
the battle were assigned the tired artillery of the 
2nd, as they had no guns of their own. They lacked 
horses, transport, and nearly everything a division 
should have, except rifles, which were in the hands 
of men who knew how to use them. On the morn- 
ing of the 10th their reconnaissance in force showed 
that the enemy artillery and machine-gun fire was 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 263 

as powerful as ever. It was hardly in the books 
that an inexperienced division should begin a move- 
ment in the dark; but the French being ready to 
advance on the left, the 36th began an attack that 
evening. 

The Germans, already preparing for retreat, still 
had large forces of field artillery in range. Evidently 
they were determined to take revenge on these new 
troops by expending in the rapid fire of a prolonged 
bombardment all they could of their ammunition, 
instead of leaving it behind to be captured. The 
accurate and moving sheet of death which was laid 
down upon the advancing infantry of the 36th was 
the kind from which men will withdraw in the sheer 
instinct of self-preservation. Indeed, a panic would 
have been excusable. But the lean tall Texans and 
Oklahomans had not come all the way from home 
to be in a battle at last with any idea of celebrating 
the occasion, or gratifying the Germans, by a re- 
treat, because of a display of fireworks. Among the 
leaping flashes in the dark, with voices unheard and 
men revealed for an instant in shadowy outline, with 
officers who had the direction of units being killed 
and wounded, with gaps being torn in the line, there 
was bound to be some disorganization. But there 
was no faltering. The Texans and Oklahomans 
are not by nature panicky. They accepted stoically 
this screaming tumult of destruction. Particularly 



264 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

it was not the nature of the Indians among them to 
he distracted by a " heap big noise." Officers 
agreed that there was no problem except that of 
keeping units together. All the men wanted was 
to " get back " at the German, straight into his bar- 
rage. Pressing on as they closed up their gaps, the 
charging groups with the bit in their teeth took the 
village of Machault. 

The enemy resistance had suddenly broken. 
After this final spasm of splenetic reprisal, all the 
German guns were moving fast toward the Aisne. 
The Texans and Oklahomans did not waste much 
time over the machine-gunners who attempted a 
rearguard action, but " hiked " ahead for fifteen 
miles in a single day, as a reminder to the 2nd, 
which had considered them " tenderfeet," that in the 
matter of long-distance racing they yielded the honor 
to nobody. Bridges destroyed, machine-gun nests 
established on the north of the river, the German 
served notice that he was to make another stand. 
The Texans and Oklahomans enjoyed themselves in 
swimming across on scouting trips and in a period 
of active sniping gratifying to ranger inheritance. 
The last day they were in line they completed their 
brief service by cleaning up Forest farm, east of 
Attigny, in an uninterrupted rush which gave them 
the opportunity to make the most of their qualities, 
and in ejecting the enemy from a bend in the river 



DISENGAGING RHEIMS 265 

which he still held. Their casualties were 2,651, 
and they had taken 813 prisoners and an engineer 
depot worth ten millions of dollars, which had sup- 
plied that section of the German line for four years. 
It was their only battle, but they had fought it in a 
way to make the most of it, in attest to the enemy 
of what might be expected of such a new division, 
if, fully equipped, it should take to the war-path 
again. 



XV 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 

Skill essential to break the heights east of the Aire — The " per 
schedule " ist Division — The much-used 32nd Division — A 
combined frontal attack on October 4th — A thin wedge to 
Fleville on the Aire — Which is broadened to the east the next 
day. 

After this diversion to the accounts of divisions 
detached for other offensives, we return now to our 
own battle in the Meuse-Argonne, where we had 
learned to our cost in the two last days of Septem- 
ber that no nibbling attacks at the close of a drive 
that had spent its momentum would serve our pur- 
pose against the gathering power of the enemy. 
There was no abatement in our industry as we 
rested our weary divisions still in line, replaced ex- 
hausted with fresh divisions, brought up fresh mate- 
rial, improved our road facilities, and tightened our 
organization during the temporary deadlock of 
furious nagging under incessant fire at the front. 

All thought centered, every finger moving about 
a map eventually "came to rest, on the bastion of 
the heights to the east of the Aire river. To the 
west its fire swept across the river trough, where 
the Pennsylvanians of the 28th Division were in a 

266 







MAP NO. i 
IN THE TROUGH OF THE AIRE. 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 267 

vise, to the Forest where the New York City men 
of the 77th were held fast in their tracks; south- 
west and south it looked down upon Exermont 
ravine and the ground which the Missourians and 
Kansans had had to yield after the charges that had 
taken the last of their strength, leaving the 28th's 
flank in the trough further exposed; southeast upon 
Gesnes and Cierges, where the battalions of the 
Pacific Coast men of the 91st and the Ohio men of 
the 37th in their weariness had been stopped by its 
blasts; and to the east on the valley north of Mont- 
faucon, where the Eastern Coast men of the 79th 
had expended the last of their reserves against the 
Ogons Wood, and beyond upon the stalwart 4th, 
which was also being shelled by the batteries across 
the Meuse, whose bank the Illinois men of the 33rd 
were holding. 

This mighty outpost locked the door to all the 
approaches to the whale-back. There was no use 
of puttering with Fabian tactics; it could be taken 
only by a spearhead drive. Though salients are the 
bane of generals, the only thing to do in this case 
was to make a salient. For this we must have 
troops of the mettle of Pickett's charge and the 
charge at Cold Harbor, whose courage would hesi- 
tate at no sacrifice, and whose skill and thrift would 
win victory with their sacrifice. 

Our 1st was our pioneer division in France. It 



268 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had fired our first shot in the war; had fought the 
first American offensive at Cantigny; had driven 
through with the loss of half its infantry to the 
heights of Soissons in turning the tide against the 
Germans; and in its swift and faultless maneuver 
in the Saint-Mihiel operation it had joined hands 
with the 26th Division to close the salient. Being 
a proved " shock " division, too valuable to be kept 
in a stationary line when another offensive was in 
preparation, it was immediately withdrawn from 
Saint-Mihiel and sent to the Meuse-Argonne area, 
where its presence in reserve was a consoling 
thought. At first the Army command considered 
expending it in a sweep up the east bank of the 
Meuse to take the heights which were raking our 
Third Corps with flanking artillery fire; and later 
considered using it to follow through the center, 
after the taking of Montfaucon, in a direct thrust 
at the whale-back. These missions had to yield to 
the more pressing one, which stopped all traffic to 
make way for its rapid march around the rear of 
the line on September 30th to take the place of the 
35th in face of these monstrous heights. 

This division wasted little time and few words on 
sentiment. The hardships of war had become a 
matter of course to its survivors. Recruits who 
filled the gaps from death, as they were rapidly 
inculcated into its standards, absorbed the profes- 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 269 

sional spirit. " You belong to the 1st, Buddy. And 
this is the way we do things in the 1st " — was the 
mandate of initiation into a proud company, which 
was facing its second winter in France. The only 
way to escape another winter in France was to win 
the war; and the way to win the war was by hard 
fighting. The regular field officers had been trained 
in a severe school; five out of six of the company 
officers were reservists. It was one of these young 
lieutenants, later killed in action, who characterized 
the views of the division when he said: "This is a 
mean and nasty kind of war, but it's the only war 
we've got, and I hope it's the last we'll ever have. 
The right way to fight it is to be just as mean and 
nasty, and just as much on the job, as the mean and 
nasty Boche." 

In command was Major-General Charles P. Sum- 
merall, who had led the 1st in the drive to Soissons. 
He is a leader compounded of all kinds of fighting 
qualities, a crusader and a calculating tactician, who, 
some say, can be as gentle as a sweet-natured 
chaplain, while others say that he is nothing but 
brimstone and ruthless determination. " As per 
schedule " are the first words of his divisional re- 
port, which is as brief and cold prose as I have 
seen, describing as hot action as I have ever known. 
He might be called " per schedule " Summerall, and 
the 1st the "per schedule " division. 



270 , OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Another veteran division was to form the right 
side of the wedge: the 32nd, National Guard of 
Michigan and Wisconsin, under Major-General 
William G. Haan, a leader whose fatherly direction 
and " flare " communicated team-play and enthu- 
siasm which an iron will could drive to its limit in 
battle. Iron was needed now: the iron of the 
spearhead, which would not blunt. The 32nd 
knew open warfare from its storming of the heights 
of the Ourcq in the Chateau-Thierry operations; 
and working its way over trench warrens from 
its three days' fighting as a division attached to 
Mangin's Army in the Juvigny operation north of 
Soissons. Sent from its first hard battle to its sec- 
ond without time for rest or replacements, it 
marched away from Juvigny, after losses of seven 
thousand six hundred men in the two battles, with 
half its requisite number of infantry officers and its 
infantry companies reduced to one hundred men. 
When it went into camp at Joinville, it had eight 
days, hardly enough to recuperate from its exhaus- 
tion, in which to train in its veteran ways five thou- 
sand replacements, before, with only two hundred 
men to the company — and half recruits, be it remem- 
bered, — and with each company short three officers, 
it was started for the Meuse-Argonne area. But 
it was considered — it must be considered — veteran 
by the Army command for this emergency, which 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 271 

was to give it a front of three miles in the place 
of the relieved 37th and 91st Divisions. The Arrow 
division, as it was called, which had twice pierced 
the German line, was to pierce it a third time before 
it was withdrawn again. 

In comparison with the 32nd, the 1st was at the 
top of its form. It had not had heavy losses since 
its Soissons drive of July i8th-22nd. The two 
months' training of the replacements which it had 
then received included its experience in the Saint- 
Mihiel operation, which had been instructive with- 
out leaving many gaps in its ranks. On the ist's 
front were the 5th Guard and 52nd German Divi- 
sions, which had come fresh into line. So veterans 
met veterans. The character of the opposition 
which the Missourians and Kansans of the 35th, 
whom the 1st had relieved, had faced, may be 
judged by the fact that for the four days in line 
before it advanced the 1st had daily average casual- 
ties of five hundred, while its men were hugging 
their fox-holes, readjusting their line, and throwing 
out patrols to gain information of service in the 
coming attack. 

Immediately ahead of it was the Montrebeau 
Wood, which the Germans had been fortifying since 
they recovered it from the 35th; beyond that the 
deep broad Exermont ravine, guarded in the center 
by the Montrefagne, or Hill 240, with its crest 



272 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

crowned by woods which covered its slopes almost 
to the edge of the ravine. This was only the highest 
of the series of hills which extended west to east 
from the Aire valley across the sector of the 32nd, 
When the first series was taken, other hills still 
higher commanded the valleys and reverse slopes 
beyond, in a witchery of irregularities which had 
their culmination in a final congeries of wooded hills 
in front of the Kriemhilde Stellung of the whale- 
back, some six miles beyond the ist's line of depar- 
ture. Every open space was covered by interlock- 
ing machine-gun nests supported by artillery con- 
centrations. Ravines were corridors for the sweep 
of fire; or if they gave cover their ends were sealed 
by fire. With its left moving along the eastern wall 
of the Aire, its flank naked to the fire from the 
western wall, the 1st was to drive a human wedge 
over these hills in order to gain one of the two sides 
of the trough, whose interlocking and plunging fire, 
as we have seen, had stayed the First Corps in the 
trough and in the Forest. Of course, the 1st would 
" go through " at the start. Its own record and 
standards compelled it to go through. It would 
make the wedge. What would be the result after 
the wedge was made? Unless the point of the 
wedge were protected by a spreading movement at 
its base, it would be crushed by pressure from both 
sides. Here the part of the 32nd became vital in 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 273 

gaining the hills on its front, which, remaining in 
the enemy's hands, would threaten the right of the 
1 st with a fire interlocking with that from the 
western wall of the Aire. In the valley of the Aire, 
of course, the Pennsylvanians of the 28th were to 
try to advance under cover of the ist's thrust. If 
they were checked, and the 32nd were also checked, 
the Germans would not be slow to see or to im- 
prove their opportunity to force a repetition of 
the bloody result of Pickett's charge and of the 
assault at Cold Harbor. 

The 1st and the 32nd were not the only veterans 
attacking on October 4th. There was to be an 
offensive along our whole line to engage the enemy 
at every point to support the prime object of mak- 
ing the wedge. The 1st started for its objectives 
at the same hour, daylight, as the other divisions. 
Its left overran the Germans of the 5th Guard 
Division in Montrebeau Wood, and swept down 
into the Exermont ravine. There the groups of 
dead of the 35th, killed by shell-bursts, gave warn- 
ing against "bunching" that the men of the 1st 
took to heart. They did not move forward in 
dense formation, but in thin swift lines offering the 
enemy few targets, and those briefly. Orders were 
simple; responsibility direct and ruthlessly delegated. 
Company leaders knew what to do against machine- 



274 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

gun nests, and they did it, thanks to the fresh vigor 
and thorough training of the men. 

Quivering under the blows of the hammer of com- 
mand and determination, the left was driven three 
miles that day, against fire from three directions 
manipulated by the cleverly conceived and cunningly 
executed open warfare tactics of the enemy: in and 
out of the folds of ground, uphill and downhill, 
taking machine-guns with barrels hot, as the Ger- 
man gunners fired until the last moment. That 
night it sent patrols into Fleville, a village on the 
bank of the Aire at the foot of a bluff, with the 
Germans holding the other bank three miles in their 
rear. The possession of Fleville was that of a 
name on the map, which read well in communiques. 
Holding the high ground above it was what counted, 
in the same way that possession of the porch counts 
if you wish to throw stones at a man on the drive- 
way below; and holding it in face of fire from flank 
and rear flank required men who would dig holes 
and stick to them. The wedge was made, but it was 
a sharp one of only one brigade front, as things had 
not gone as well as they might either with the right 
of the ist or with the 32nd. 

The right of the ist crossing Exermont ravine 
under enfilade and frontal fire charged into the 
wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, or Hill 240. 
Twice that day we had the hill; and twice the Ger- 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 275 

mans, reinforced, surged back, and drove us off. 
Our men were saying that " every Boche who didn't 
have a machine-gun had a cannon "; for the enemy, 
realizing the value of every foot of ground, was 
using roving guns attached to his infantry battalions. 
We were doing the same. There were instances, 
in the course of this battle for the heights, when 
our infantry charges came within a hundred feet of 
field guns which the enemy boldly — and it seemed 
miraculously — withdrew under our rifle fire to the 
cover of reverse slopes. 

The repulse of the right of the 1st was of course 
intimately concerned with the situation of the 32nd, 
which was fighting against the same kind of tactics 
on the same general kind of ground, which had its 
own particularly refractory qualities. Before the 
attack the Arrows had entered Cierges, which they 
found unoccupied; but the German evacuation of the 
village only opened up a field of approach com- 
manded by the strengthened defenses of the sur- 
rounding positions, which had already forced the 
withdrawal of the last of the reserves of the 37th 
and 91st in their final charges before being relieved. 
Thus the 32nd had its center in a kind of trough, 
commanded by heights and woods. Gesnes was its 
first goal; but to take Gesnes the positions east and 
west of it must be conquered. On the right the 
charge reached the summit of Hill 239, due east of 



276 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the village of Gesnes, but could go no farther. To 
the west were the two woods Chene Sec and 
Morine, forming a single oblong patch. The left 
charged them repeatedly, in vain. The Arrows 
were fighting with veteran will, but their charges 
could not proceed against the welter of machine-gun 
and artillery fire, while they were swept by bullets 
from German aeroplanes flying audaciously low. 

In all that long day of ceaseless endeavor, when 
its replacements were learning their lessons hot 
from the enemy's guns and rifles, the 32nd had been 
able to gain a little more than half a mile, with every 
rod counted. Its effort and that of the right of the 
1st, let it be repeated, had been mutually dependent 
for success on their liaison in the hectic rushes of 
units for points of advantage over the treacherous 
ground. That is, if an element of one division made 
a gain, it must have the support of a gain by the 
other. Though the wedge made by the left of the 
1st on October 4th was narrower than we had 
planned, we did have a wedge, and where we wanted 
it — on the wall of the Aire valley. We must not 
lose that wedge, though the 28th had been able 
to make only a slight advance in the valley. The 
dangerous position of the left of the 1st on the bluff 
above Fleville called for desperately hard driving 
the next day by both the 32nd and the ist's retarded 
right. 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 277 

In supporting the ist's right, whose advance was 
so vital in protecting the entrant the ist's left had 
made, the 32nd set its heart on gaining the block 
of the Morine and Chene Sec woods and Hill 255 
beyond. From midnight to the hour of attack, all 
the artillery of the 32nd pounded them, keeping the 
dark masses of the woods and the outlines of the 
hill flickeringly visible in the flashes of a stream of 
bursting shells, which it would seem no defender 
could withstand. At 6.30 three battalions of in- 
fantry began the assault of the woods, and over 
the fresh shell-craters, past smashed machine-gun 
nests, through a litter of fallen saplings and splin- 
tered limbs, they kept on until they reached the open. 
This was a triumph of incalculable value to the right 
of the 1st, and in turn to the wedge on the Aire 
wall. But when the charge started to go on to 
Hill 255, the artillery concentration could not stifle 
the irresistible machine-gun fire of the nests hidden 
in all the recesses of the forward slopes, or the guns 
on the reverse slopes and on the series of heights 
beyond. 

Meanwhile the center and right had passed the 
village of Gesnes through encircling fire, which, once 
they were beyond the village, grew to such volume 
that they were stopped. Demands went back for 
more shells from the divisional artillery, — demands 
which the artillery of three or four divisions and all 



278 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the heavy artillery of the Army, which could alone 
reach the more distant enemy guns, could not have 
filled. However, the gunners gave all the volume 
in their power with all possible rapidity. Again the 
infantry moved forward to the attack; but our 
bombardment seemed only to have stirred up a 
heavier one in answer, and brought additional enemy 
machine-guns to bear. It was hopeless to try to go 
on. If the Arrows could not go on, it was folly to 
remain targets nailed to exposed ground around 
Gesnes, and accordingly they withdrew through the 
town, but still retaining the hard-won woods on the 
left, whose possession was essential to the success 
of the attack of the right of the ist. 

The ist's goal on the 5th was that wooded hill 
and the wooded slopes of the Montrefagne, which 
had resisted the efforts of yesterday. During the 
night Summerall had appeared among his men, a 
dynamic, restless figure, insisting that there must be 
no failure on the morrow. With all the divisional 
artillery at play in a mobile pattern of fire, at once 
smashing the enemy machine-gun nests and advanc- 
ing the shields where needed, the infantry in sys- 
tematic charges continued making progress until the 
Montrefagne was theirs. When darkness came, 
they joined up with the left in line with Fleville. 
The wedge was this much broadened, its position 
accordingly stronger. As the 28th had still been 



VETERANS DRIVE A WEDGE 279 

unable to make much headway, the wedge could not 
be driven farther until the base was spread, with- 
out exposing a longer flank to the fire from the 
western wall of the Aire valley, and on the right 
from the sector of the 32nd, whose elements were 
in poor liaison that night with those of the 1st. So 
the men of the 1st, become cave-dwellers on the 
heights in their industrious digging, had one side of 
the Aire trough as far as Fleville, — and that was 
the intrinsic value of the wedge. The next step was 
to be the spreading of the wedge across the valley 
of the Aire itself, by thrusting in another fresh divi- 
sion between the 1st and the 28th at the base of the 
bluffs to assault the Forest escarpments. This 
movement would support the 1st, and would in turn 
be supported by the ist's further advance. 



XVI 

MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 

West of the river — The 82nd Division called for — A difficult align- 
ment — The outpost hills taken on the 7th of October — And 
the 28th cleans up the escarpments on its front — The all- 
American character of the 82nd — The enemy defends desper- 
ately the remaining escarpments — Repeated charges up the 
bluffs — Which are cleared by the 10th. 

Hovering in reserve since September 26th, the 
82nd Division, National Army, was now to have its 
turn to be " expended " in the battle. During its 
period of waiting it had two battalions severely 
shelled on the way to assist the 35th Division in an 
attack which was countermanded; and of course its 
engineers had been kept employed on the roads. No 
engineers in sight were ever out of work, from the 
beginning to the end of the battle. Previously the 
division, which had stayed but a brief time on the 
British front, had served during the summer months 
on the Toul front, where it had advanced on the 
extreme right flank of the Saint-Mihiel operation. 
Originally formed in the South, the 82nd had been 
called the " All-American " division because it had 
been filled with draft men from all parts of the 
country, though its training-camp associations re- 

280 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 281 

mained Southern, and most of its officers were South- 
erners. Now it was chosen for the thrust in the 
valley of the Aire to spread the wedge which the 
1 st had driven. 

We know how the 28th Division threw its men 
against the Argonne escarpments in the first days 
of the battle. Since then it had remained in the 
trough of the Aire under continual flanking fire, 
while its units had alternate periods of rest; but 
after all it had endured, even its determination could 
not give it the vigor of a fresh division. On the 
4th and 5th, while the 1st on its flank was advanc- 
ing, and again on the 6th, while the 1st was dug 
in, it had kept up its attacks, with the net result 
that its left had made some further progress against 
the Taille l'Abbe of infamous reputation, and its 
right had advanced as far as Hill 180, a mile and 
a half to the south of the village of Fleville where 
the men of the 1st were hugging the bluffs, which 
formed a bastion in the trough interlocking the 
fire from either side. 

Having moved down the valley of the Aire under 
the portion of the eastern wall which the 1st held, 
the 82nd was to face west and attack toward the 
western wall. Getting into position for the action 
was itself a ticklish business as a tactical maneuver 
for the infantry. The shell-swept road which it 
was to use for bringing its artillery and transport 



282 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

up this narrow passage under the enemy's flanking 
machine-gun nests, was already taxed with the 
transport of the 28th, which was still to go on 
attacking. The 28th had sworn that it would not 
leave the valley until it had taken the Taille l'Abbe. 
It had prior rights to that formidable escarpment. 

If ever a division needed capable guides, it was 
the 82nd on the night of the 6th. It had to slip 
past Chatel-Chehery on the opposite bank of the 
river, from which patrols of the 28th had been 
ejected in the day's attack, and on past Hill 223 
and Hill 180 to a point near Fleville, in a winding, 
exposed passage. There were unexpected delays 
on the roads. At 2.30 in the morning the artillery 
was stalled, and some of the infantry was still at 
Varennes, five miles from its jumping-off place for 
the attack set for three hours later. Guides failing 
to appear, it was not surprising that the regiment 
which was to attack on the left, or south, against 
Hill 223 should have gone too far in the darkness, 
when a man was hardly visible ten yards away; and, 
after marching and groping all night, should have 
had to retrace its steps. With men exhausted and 
units confused, it arrived at its jumping-off line to 
find that not a single gun was up for its support. 
An advance according to schedule became out of the 
question. 

By accepted canons this misfortune might have 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 283 

ruined the whole movement, or at least led to delay- 
ing the movements of the other units; but delays 
were out of the question. There was no time to 
communicate counter-orders to the 28th, which had 
gathered all its strength for a supreme effort whose 
success depended upon the cooperation of the 82nd. 
If the whole line could not go forward at daylight, 
then all of it that could must go. Fortunately the 
dark night, which had screened their movement 
from accurate fire by the enemy, was followed by 
a thick morning fog. This was opportune in par- 
tially screening an attack which must cross the river 
in face of the heights which they were to storm. 
The right, or north, regiment, as it started on time, 
had the advantage of the fog in its first rush. The 
men forded through water two and three feet deep; 
the officers who were leading pulled them up the 
steep banks on the other side. By 8.30 Hill 180, 
with its machine-gun nests, which had been one 
of the bulwarks defying the thin line of the 28th 
for nearly two weeks, was no longer in German 
hands. The men of the left regiment, starting at 
9 o'clock against a still higher hill, 223, overlooking 
Chatel-Chehery, were swept at the fords by enfilade 
shell-fire and storms of machine-gun bullets in front, 
which made fearful gaps in their ranks. Under the 
spur of their delay, considering nothing except that 
they must make up for lost time, they plunged 



284 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ahead, and once across they did not bother with any 
deliberate infiltration around machine-gun nests, but 
simply swept over them in headlong impatience. 
By one o'clock they had the hill, a portion of which 
had been reached by a small detachment of the 28th. 
They did not know whether or not the 28th had 
reached Chatel-Chehery until they saw soldiers of 
the 28th climbing the steep sides of Hill 244 back 
of the town. The fact that two-thirds of the men 
of two of the companies of the 82nd were killed or 
wounded was evidence enough that the 1st was not 
the only division willing to pay a price for gains 
when it was called upon to be a human wedge. This 
finished the day's work for the left regiment, except 
for a German counter-attack which received such 
prompt and efficacious attention that another was 
not attempted. 

The 82nd having taken over a portion of its line, 
the 28th had been able to concentrate its forces on 
the remainder. Though by all criteria the 28th 
should have been counted as already " expended," 
it had an access of energy at the prospect of attack- 
ing under more favorable circumstances the posi- 
tions which had so long held it back. After build- 
ing a foot-bridge across the Aire, the right regiment 
charged across the level toward the village of 
Chatel-Chehery, at the base of the heights. This 
time the Pennsylvanians meant to put more than 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 285 

patrols into the village. Lashed by gun-fire and 
whipped by machine-gun fire from the heights which 
had them seemingly at their mercy, units were rid- 
dled and their officers killed, with resulting disper- 
sion as undaunted survivors sought for dead spaces 
and cover. The colonel in command fell mortally 
wounded by a machine-gun bullet while directing his 
men. His soldiers avenged him not only by taking 
and holding Chatel-Chehery, but that night they took 
Hill 244, the ridge following south to the Taille 
1'Abbe, silencing its galling fire on the river bottoms. 
So much for the right. The left regiment was 
again to attack the Taille l'Abbe. This, being far- 
ther south, and toward the rear, than Chatel- 
Chehery, which was in turn south of the 82nd's 
front, further illustrates the anomalous tactical situa- 
tion and the interdependence of all the diverse and 
treacherous elements of ground and dispositions in 
the problem of supporting the driving of the ist's 
wedge. In the course of their arduous ten days 1 
effort to carry out the original plan of " scalloping" 
the Forest edge to protect the frontal attack of the 
77th through the Forest, the Pennsylvanians had 
developed a sinuous line around the slopes which in 
places ran at right angles to our battle-front as a 
whole. It was a line with outposts holding ravines, 
and groups clinging to vantage points of all kinds, 
who, in their fox-holes, were the present masters of 



286 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

their destiny, isolated from communication by day 
and approachable only by silent crawling under cover 
of darkness. This process of infiltration had bent 
a shepherd's crook around the Taille l'Abbe. All 
the whittling of ten long days came to a head in 
the attack of October 7th, whose ax's blow cut deep 
into the Forest to La Viergette, past the south flank 
of the Taille l'Abbe, whose defenses must now 
crumple under the additional pressure from the 
north. 

While we are with the 28th, we shall follow its 
career through the Aire valley to the end. On the 
8th neither the general situation in relation to the 
neighboring divisions nor its exhaustion warranted 
a general attack by the 28th; but it did not neglect 
a little chore, which gave it retributory satisfaction, 
in cleaning up the last of the machine-gun nests and 
any vagrant Germans remaining on the hateful 
Abbe. Its goal won, its honor avenged, it was now 
to have the rest which it had as fully earned as the 
name of the " Iron Division," which it was now 
being called. It was relieved on the night of the 
8th-9th by the 82nd. In a marvelous endurance 
test of twelve days, in which the men had gone with- 
out cooked food under continual rains, the Pennsyl- 
vanians had suffered 6,149 casualties, while 1,200 
officers and men had been sent to hospitals, ill as 
the result of the terrible strain and exposure. They 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 287 

had advanced over six miles. They had taken 550 
prisoners and 8 guns in their plodding gains against 
fearful odds; and do not forget, as they will tell you, 
that they had also taken two German locomotives, 
most useful for bringing up supplies on a captured 
section of railroad which the engineers had re- 
paired. The engineers particularly, and all the 
Pennsylvanians, were proud of that railroad — the 
2 8th's own trunk line; but the proudest thought of 
these emaciated Guardsmen, as they marched away, 
was that they had not had to leave the conquest of 
the Taille l'Abbe to a fresh division. They had 
taken it themselves. 

Now Hills 223 and 180, which the 82nd had cap- 
tured in its first day's fighting on the 7th, were as 
detached forts, nearer the eastern wall than the 
western, in a broad stretch of the valley. Their 
crests looked over a rolling stretch of bottom lands 
to the bluffs of the Forest's edge, which were so 
steep that the naked earth broken by landslides held 
only scattered dwarf trees and shrubs. Torrents 
dashed down the ravines during heavy rains. Scal- 
ing rather than assault was the word to describe an 
attempt at their mastery. Artillery was hidden on 
their crests, and machine-guns on their crests and 
in the favoring intricacies of the slopes. 

Northwest from Hill 180 the village of Cornay 
nestled at the foot of an escarpment flung out from 



288 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the Forest almost to the river's bank. This promon- 
tory made of the stretch of bottom a kind of bay. 
While commanding in rear and flank the farther 
advance of the ist on the opposite river wall, it could 
also turn a flanking fire on any charge across the 
bay toward the bluffs in addition to the plunging 
frontal fire from the bluffs. Cornay must be taken 
in order to gain the valley as far as Fleville. On 
the way across the bay, either to Cornay or to the 
bluffs, any charge must cross the Boulasson creek, 
which was unfordable at points. Thus this bay 
was a cut de sac; but a visible one. The All- 
Americas knew what to expect on their way to the 
heights. 

With its personnel varying from little men from 
the tenements to tall lean men of the cotton-fields, 
the 82nd had in its pride of corps the rivalry of 
community, region, and state. It was said that one 
city division had been careful in its sifting when it 
transferred an excess of its draft men to the 82nd. 
If so, the result shows how inspectors may err in 
judging by the measure of a recruit's chest whether 
or not he will have the heart of a warrior when 
good food reddens the blood pumped through the 
valves it strengthens, and drill and comradeship 
stiffen his fighting temper. The All-Americas might 
have no state or group of states that claimed them 
for its own; but the conviction that they were for all 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 289 

the states — all America — was the fostering spirit of 
the four days of unceasing attack that were now to 
begin. 

On the 8th the south regiment, moving down the 
slope of Hill 223 and crossing the level, had reached 
the ridge beyond in two hours. By 5 P.M. it had 
fought its way to the possession of a portion of the 
ridge. Bitterly yielding to the power of the enemy's 
fire after companies, in characteristic all-America 
bravery, had lost half their numbers, it retired 
down the slope during the night to dig itself pro- 
tection. The north regiment bridged and forded 
and swam the creek, and fought all day for Cornay 
and the heights to the westward. The Germans 
did not depend alone upon fire from the heights. 
Their machine-gunners were under cover of the 
bushes and knolls of the bottoms, contesting the 
passage of the brook, sweeping stretches of its wind- 
ing course with flanking as well as frontal fire. 
Their roving field guns attached to battalions fired 
at point-blank range upon the infantry wave as it 
appeared on a knoll on the other side of the brook 
before Cornay, and the men face to face with the 
gunners bore them down and passed on. By six 
that afternoon they were in the town and up the 
slopes of the adjoining heights. There were not 
enough of them to hold what they had taken. All 
but forty men of two companies had been killed or 



2 9 Q OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

wounded in crossing those deadly reaches of the 
river bottom. As darkness fell, bullets were spat- 
tering in every street in Cornay, and pelting down 
from the crest upon the All-Americas, trying to dig 
into the slope. Orders had to be given for with- 
drawal from Cornay and the most exposed ground, 
for a night of reorganization in the valley of the 
brook. 

A reserve regiment of the 82nd, having taken 
over the 28th's front, spent the next day under 
galling fire in swinging its line up level with the 
other regiments. Again a charge, running the 
gamut from the bluffs and in face of machine-gun 
nests in the village itself, entered Cornay at 1 1 A.M. ; 
again we were slowly forcing our way up the heights 
where in places the men could climb only by draw- 
ing themselves up by bushes and dwarf trees. Re- 
duced in number by the incessant drain of casualties, 
beginning to feel the exhaustion from three days' 
fighting and nights practically without sleep, they 
thought that this time they could hold their gains; 
but at dusk a German counter-attack launched right 
across the river bottom from Fleville to Cornay 
under a barrage of shells and machine-gun bullets, 
and by infiltration from the heights into Cornay, 
where our men fought from house to house in a 
confused struggle against odds, forced those of 
the advanced groups who did not remain to die in 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 291 

their tracks to fall back upon their reserves, who 
stood fast. The Germans depended much upon 
that counter-attack, and they made it at a time 
when the losses and exhaustion of the 82nd, of 
which they were fully aware, might well have led 
them to think that this young division would break 
under a sharp blow. Far from breaking, the 
82nd, having savagely and promptly repulsed the 
counter-attack, was, despite its casualties, further to 
extend its front that night by taking over the eastern 
bank of the river from the 1st Division. 

October 10th was to see the culmination of the 
movement in the trough of the Aire, when the 77th, 
the pressure on its flank released, was to begin its 
final sweep through the Forest. It was to be a 
day of such retribution for the 82nd as the 28th 
had had in the taking of the Taille l'Abbe; hills and 
woods are the landmarks of divisional histories in 
this battle. The dead of the 82nd were inter- 
mingled with the dead enemy on the slopes and in 
Cornay, and in that stretch of the river bottom 
which in its exposure resembles more closely than 
the background of any other charge in the Meuse- 
Argonne battle the open fields which Pickett's men 
crossed in their rush up the slopes of Seminary 
Ridge. The gallant officers who led these men knew 
that they would follow, and Major-General George 
B. Duncan, who had taken command of the division 



292 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

before the battle, was serene and resourceful in his 
confidence. 

Along the embankment, along the banks of the 
creek, in little gullies and dips of that cut de sac of 
a bay, they had pegged down their gains as the 
jumping-off places for their assaults on the gallery 
of heights overlooking the stage of their indomitable 
tenacity. They were fighting against better than 
German veterans — German specialists. The pris- 
oners they took usually yielded not in bodies but 
as individuals or small groups, wounded, exhausted, 
surrounded by dead. Two out of three of those in 
the Cornay region were machine-gunners or chosen 
non-commissioned officers who were trusted to fight 
to the death and make the most of their sacrifice 
by their skill. First and last the 82nd captured 277 
machine-guns, as the harvest of its courage at close 
quarters. 

On the morning of the 10th it brought its field 
guns close up behind the infantry, assigned roving 
guns to its battalions, and placed its Hotchkiss guns 
and its little 37's in the front line, which smashed 
machine-gun nests at point-blank range. Now the 
All-Americas took Cornay for the last time, clear- 
ing its streets and cellars; swept up the valley and 
over the ridge above Cornay; and sprinting patrols 
entered Marcq in the plain beyond, while from the 
conquered higher ground they looked down upon 



MASTERING THE AIRE TROUGH 293 

the bend of the river toward Grandpre, where it 
passes between the Argonne and the Boult Forests. 
At last the trough of the Aire with both its walls 
was ours from Varennes past Cornay. The taking 
of the gap of Grandpre which brought us in face 
of the heights beyond may wait upon an account of 
the action of the 1st and 32nd from October 6th 
to nth. 



XVII 

VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 

The ist marking time — A fumble gives one height — Relying on the 
engineers — The triangle of hills — A tribute from the enemy — 
The. Arrow Division also pointed at the whale-back — Which 
resists intact — Still the ist goes on — "As good as the ist." 

[As soon as the 82nd's attacks on the river bottoms 
were well under way, the ist was to make another 
rush, driving its wedge ahead of the 82nd's front 
over the hills of the eastern wall. On the 6th, the 
day before the All-Americas took Hills 180 and 
223, and the day before the Pennsylvanians of the 
i8th took Chatel-Chehery, the ist was due to mark 
time; and so also was the 32nd — still holding the 
block of the Morine and Chene Sec woods and 
withdrawn from Gesnes, — which was in turn de- 
pendent for further advance upon the movement in 
the Aire trough. The flanks of the two divisions, 
left out of liaison as a result of the viciously con- 
fused fighting of the 5th, must join up. 

In the neighborhood of their junction, northwest 
of the Morine and Chene Sec woods, the highest 
point was Hill 269, in the Money Wood. To the 
west 269 looked across all the hilltops to the 

294 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 295 

Argonne Forest, and to the east almost to the 
Meuse. This distance of vision, it should be ex- 
plained, did not mean observation of the slopes of 
the other hills or the low ground at their bases. 
Each hill which we had conquered or had yet to 
conquer on the way to the whale-back was only one 
of an interlocking series. Though none approached 
the spectacular formidability of an isolated height 
towering over a surrounding plain, Hill 269 was 
relatively very important because of its situation and 
altitude. 

The statement that the 1st was marking time on 
the 6th must be qualified by the activity of its 
patrols; for it was not in the nature or traditions 
of the pioneer division ever to dig a hole and sit 
in it all day, leaving the initiative to the enemy. It 
was always hugging him close, ready to jump for 
any opening that offered. A patrol kept on going 
until it developed enough resistance to warrant its 
withdrawal with the information it had gained. 
Also it took responsibility, and did not wait on 
orders if it found an opportunity of turning a trick. 
This seems an obvious system; but its application 
may vary in efficiency from experience to inexperi- 
ence, from clumsiness to shrewdness, from foolish 
bravado to courageous and resourceful discretion. 
One of the ist's patrols, in the course of linking up 
with the 32nd on the 6th, kept feeling its way 



296 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

through the Money Wood without any opposition 
until it came to the top of Hill 269. This was in 
the 32nd Division's sector; but veteran divisions do 
not stand on etiquette on such occasions. They 
know that in the gamble of battle the division which 
lends a helping hand one day may need a helping 
hand the next. In sending out the patrol, the 
brigade commander had made it small, as he did 
not want many men killed; for he appreciated what 
hidden machine-guns could do to the most agile 
group of scouts when the gunners held their fire for 
a propitious moment. 

We had caught the Germans napping on 269. 
The advantage we had gained resembled that taken 
of a fumble at football. Any " kid " lieutenant or 
any one of his men could see as well as General 
Pershing himself that this crest was worth holding; 
and that daring little group held it until relieved 
by two companies of the 32nd. Meanwhile the 
fumble had enabled the 1st to take the Arietal 
farm, which formed a natural rallying point for 
enemy machine-gunners in the ravine between the 
Money and the Little woods (le Petit Bois). This 
was an advantage for the next attack second only 
to the occupation of 269, with which it had a close 
tactical relation. 

On the 7th the 1st, which had been under the 
First Corps, was transferred to the Fifth, and its 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 297 

front extended to include Hill 269. It was now 
time for the division engineers, who had been work- 
ing night and day on the roads, to cease their idling 
and begin fighting. The battalion which was sent 
to take over 269 from the 32nd was soon to find 
what store the Germans set by it, once they realized 
the blunder that had allowed it to slip out of their 
hands. The enemy's artillery proceeded to make 
this sharply defined cone a pillar of hell; but the 
engineers were used to digging, and they dug with 
a vengeance. They were also used to sticking on 
the job. In the face of counter-attacks, supported 
by a rain of shells and bullets of artillery and 
machine-gun barrages, they held their ground in the 
midst of fountains of earth and flying debris and 
frightful casualties, with that resolution in which 
every man, no matter how many of his comrades 
are killed, determines that he will not yield alive. 

After the driving of the wedge to Fleville and 
the taking of Montrefagne, the 1st had been badly 
shattered. The heavy rains had made the holding 
of the eastern wall of the Aire under the murder- 
ously accurate flanking fire from the western wall all 
the more horrible. Transport was being regularly 
shelled; woods, where reserves might take cover, 
were being gassed. Not only was the doctrine of 
the 1st never to yield ground taken upheld at every 
point, but it was continuing to improve its position 



298 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

on the 7th and 8th while it reorganized its available 
forces, steadily reduced by casualties, in an un- 
daunted offensive spirit. 

The 28th having taken the Chatel-Chehery 
heights of the opposite valley wall, and the 82nd 
attacking the Cornay heights, the 9th was chosen 
as the day when the hammer should again begin 
pounding the wedge into the ramparts ahead. By 
this time the 1st had had over 5,000 casualties, rep- 
resenting more than one-third of its infantry. There 
was an old rule that when a third of your men were 
out of action it was time for retreat. This had 
ceased to apply in the Great War; it was hardly a 
view that Summerall would hold. The 1st had not 
yet finished its task, and he meant that it should be 
finished. There could be no question of fatigue, or 
excuses. More engineers were summoned into line; 
everything that veteran experience could arrange 
was ready. The ammunition supply and the trans- 
port were up; the hospital service was prepared for 
heavy casualties. Every man's jaw was set for a 
final triumphant drive which should finally clear the 
wall of the Aire. 

The enemy's jaw was set too. He knew that our 
next rush would be a desperate effort to reach the 
main-line defenses of the whale-back. Indeed, this 
was our plan, which required that the 1st go about 
a mile and a half over even more formidable ground 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 299 

than in the drive of the 4th and 5th. On the ist's 
right, Hill 269 in the Money Wood was safely held, 
if at a bloody cost. On the center and right the 
Montrefagne Wood ran northeast in the narrow 
tongue of the Little Wood. In this wood, about on 
a line with 269, was Hill 272, the highest of all 
the hills on the ist's front, which we knew was 
strongly held and strongly fortified. The Little 
Wood, broadening beyond it, extended westward, 
while the ravine between it and the Money Wood 
(Hill 269) wound in the same direction. Well 
back in this portion of the Little Wood was Hill 
263, which was at the apex of a triangle with 269 
and 272 as the base. Our seizure of Arietal farm 
in the ravine before it could be fortified enabled our 
men, thanks to the protection from our seizure of 
Hill 269, to establish themselves on the 7th and 8th 
on the slopes of the two other hills. Thus we were 
saved from a cross-fire in having to pass between 
the two base angles of the triangle toward the 
apex. We could take Hill 272, the remaining hill 
at the base, in flank. It was certainly good general- 
ship which won this advantage for us, and poor gen- 
eralship which lost it for the enemy. Once we had 
Hill 263 at the apex, it was downhill through the 
Romagne woods until we were before the Kriem- 
hilde Stellung, which bent southward on the ist's 
right in front of the 32nd's sector. To the west of 



3 oo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Little and Romagne woods many patches of woods 
gave cover for machine-guns on the ascents of the 
Maldah ridge, which ran to the end of the Aire 
wall where the Aire bent sharply westward to the 
gap of Grandpre. However, the crux of the prob- 
lem of the ist on the 9th was the taking of Hill 
272 at the western point of the triangle and 263 at 
the apex. 

Being a gunner, Summerall believed in making 
the most of gun power. He had trained the artil- 
lery of the ist, and knew its capabilities. This im- 
plied anything but penuriousness in the expenditure 
of ammunition. Throughout the 7th and 8th, day 
and night, the ist's artillery had been "softening" 
the defenses of these two hills and of all the other 
positions with a concentrated bombardment, and 
placing ceaseless interdictory fire in their rear to 
keep them isolated from communication. 

If ever infantry needed powerful barrages to 
protect its swift charges, it was on the morning of 
the 9th. Any failure to go home at any point might 
be fatal to the whole movement. As supple as the 
enemy, the ist was using roving, or tramp, guns to 
counter his roving guns. The remainder of the divi- 
sional artillery was entirely concentrated in making 
shields in turn for the right, left, and center, which 
advanced successively instead of at the same time. 
The weather as well as the barrages was in our 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 301 

favor. A dense fog hid our waves from the enemy's 
observation. His machine-gunners in some instances 
could not see to fire until our men were upon them; 
in others, as the fog lifted on the exposed targets, 
our losses were ghastly without staying our prog- 
ress. 

Apart from the engineers, the division had only 
one battalion of fresh infantry in reserve. This 
battalion was sent against the highest of the hills, 
272. Breaking through the fog, in bolt surprise, it 
took prisoner every man of the garrison of 272 who 
was not killed. As the curtain of bursting shells of 
the shield which our men were hugging lifted, the 
German lieutenant-colonel in command of the hill 
started out of his dugout, only to see the charge 
sweeping past its mouth, and, in turn, past all the 
dugouts where his troops had taken cover from the 
approaching tornado. He knew that all was lost; 
and he wept in his humiliation at being captured. 
It was the first time that the shock division to which 
he belonged had ever been on the defensive. He 
paid a soldier's tribute to the power and accuracy 
of the artillery fire of the 1st, which for two days 
had marooned him, without food for his men and 
unable to send them orders or to receive orders 
from his superior. He had not believed that in five 
years the Americans would have been able to 
develop such a division as the 1st; and one's only 



302 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

comment on this is that the men of the ist were the 
same kind of men as in the other divisions. He 
had happened to meet the ist, as any other divi- 
sion will tell you. German officers who met other 
divisions in the Argonne held the same view about 
them. Professional opinions from such experts 
were worth while. 

Our attack on Hill 272 on the left and our pos- 
session of 269 on the right protecting their flanks, 
the troops which were making a head-on drive for 
263 had an equally brilliant success, thanks to the 
same thoroughgoing, enterprising, and courageous 
tactics. Those on the left, with the enemy's plans 
upset by the loss of 272 and 263, wove their way 
through the patches of woods, conquering successive 
machine-gun nests until the Cote de Maldah was 
theirs in a sweep no less important as a part of the 
well-arranged whole, though perhaps less sensa- 
tional. So much for the day's work of the 1st in 
the high tide of its career on October 9th. 

We shall now take up that of the Arrows of the 
32nd. On the 7th and 8th the 32nd had been busy 
sending out patrols and seeking to gain certain van- 
tage points which would be useful in the next day's 
attack. It had established itself in Gesnes. Its own 
artillery was now back with the division, taking the 
place of that of the 30th Division, which, after its 
exhausting work in forcing its guns through the 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 303 

Montfaucon woods in support of the 37th, had still 
remained in line in support of the 32nd. In addi- 
tion the artillery of the 42nd, or Rainbow, Division, 
which was now coming up in reserve, was placed at 
the disposal of the 32nd; for it could not have too 
much gun power if it were to make any headway 
on the 9th. Nor could it have too much infantry. 
The 1 8 1st Brigade of the 91st, Pacific Coast, Divi- 
sion had not gone into rest when the 91st had been 
" expended " in the early period of the battle. It 
was now placed in line between the 1st and the 
32nd, and despite their fatigue the Pacific Coast men 
were relied upon for nothing less than the assault 
of that Hill 255 whose galling fire had checked the 
32nd's advance on the 5th. 

The " side-slipping " of the division sector when 
the 1st relinquished the bank of the Aire and came 
under the administration of the Fifth Corps had not 
given the 32nd any easier task. Wasn't it a veteran 
division? Wasn't it used to being expended? The 
ambition of the Army command was in the saddle 
again, expecting the Arrows, with the artillery of 
two divisions in support, to penetrate immediately 
the Kriemhilde Stellung, or main defenses of the 
whale-back. 

As the Kriemhilde bent south past the ist's flank, 
it was within a mile of the 32nd's front. On the 
32nd's left it was established in the Valoup Wood on 



3 o 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the ridge of the Cote Dame Marie, a name of 
infernal associations in the history of two veteran 
divisions. In the center it passed in front of the 
town of Romagne. To the right or east it continued 
on another ridge in the strong Mamelle trench. 
The plan was a swing to the left through Valoup 
Wood to take the Cote Dame Marie, and a swing 
to the right to take the Mamelle trench, encircling 
the village of Romagne, while the center on the 
Gesnes-Romagne road regulated its advance with 
that of the flanks. 

It might have been carried out in one day, as an 
officer said, if the 32nd had had the artillery of five 
or six divisions and a score of heavy batteries from 
the French, while the men had been provided with 
shell- and bullet-proof armor. This heroic dream 
is mentioned in passing. More to the point is what 
the men of the 32nd accomplished; for they almost 
made the dream come true before darkness fell on 
the night of October 9th. They were the Arrows 
indeed — an arrow on the right and on the left — 
with the bow of determination drawn taut before 
the attacks were released. That on the left pene- 
trated the Dame Marie, while the right penetrated 
the Mamelle trench where the meager numbers 
which formed the very tip of the arrow-head were 
stopped in a bout of hand-to-hand fighting, while 
their comrades on the right and left were held up 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 305 

by the wire and the relentlessly increasing machine- 
gun fire. The center could not advance. Romagne 
was not encircled. 

The 181st Brigade of the 91st had orders to hold 
during the attack on the 9th; then, as standing still 
appeared to be poor policy, it had orders to assault 
Hill 255, whose fire had stayed progress on the 
6th. Later orders came that the support was un- 
necessary, but not until the Pacific Coast men were 
already started forward, only to have to dig in in 
face of annihilating fire. The next day, the Ger- 
mans now evacuating Hill 255 under the flanking 
pressure of the 1st and 32nd, the Pacific Coast men 
mopped up the hill, captured the concrete block- 
house on the reverse slope, and then set out to mop 
up the Tuilerie farm, which was supposed to be 
taken. Unfortunately it was not taken. Between 
them and the farm was Hill 288, the highest of all, 
with an outpost of the Kriemhilde position in the 
form of a horse-shoe organized in a sunken road 
with walls twenty or thirty feet high. Tunnels from 
the road allowed the machine-gunners to play hide 
and seek in going and coming to the slope. Their 
fire and plentiful gas and high-explosive shells 
checked the front line about three hundred yards 
south of the hill. The next day the brigade was to 
attack again in case there were enough artillery fire 
forthcoming to "soften" the hill; but there was 



3 o6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

not. The Pacific Coast men were now relieved by- 
units of the 32nd. Shivering for want of woolen 
underwear, rarely getting hot meals, their long 
service in the battle was over. Though many were 
ill, they refused to report on the sick list for fear 
that they would be transferred from hospital to 
another division than their own. 

It was no less a policy of the Arrows of the 32nd 
than of the 1st Division never to yield gains. They 
were at close quarters with the Kriemhilde, and 
they proposed to remain there. The enemy's fully 
aroused artillery and machine-gun resistance to pro- 
tect the points where the Kriemhilde had been 
entered prevented any headway on the 10th and 
nth, while hand-to-hand fighting continued on the 
Dame Marie ridge. Before the 32nd was to con- 
quer the ridge and take Romagne, it must make 
preparation equal to the task. This belongs to 
another stage of the battle. We are presently con- 
cerned with the fact that the Arrows had done their 
part in the costly operation that had conquered the 
heights into which the 1st had driven its wedge. 

The enemy now withdrawing from the front of 
the 1st across the valley and low ground to the 
Kriemhilde, which was here farther north than in 
front of the 32nd, the 1st, in a movement of ex- 
ploitation, with gratefully few casualties made a 
mile on the 10th, passing through the Romagne 



VETERANS CONTINUE DRIVING 307 

Wood and beyond the village of Sommerance. On 
the next day, feeling out the enemy positions with a 
knowing hand, the veterans learned that they could 
be taken only by fresh troops in a thoroughly or- 
ganized attack. The 1st had accomplished its dar- 
ing mission; it had won a telling victory. Three- 
fifths of its infantry was out of action from death 
and wounds; the remainder had been fully "ex- 
pended " in exhaustion or sickness. Surely no 
division in all our history had ever been in finer con- 
dition for battle, or fought with more discipline and 
skillful valor, or suffered more losses in a single 
action. "To be as good" as the pioneer 1st had 
been the ambition of all the divisions in the early 
days of our fighting in France. If some became as 
good, this is the more honor to them. 

The affection of long association creeps in as I 
think of the ist's first detachments arriving at 
Saint-Nazaire, or of its pioneer training on the drill- 
grounds at Gondrecourt in the days when there was 
a fear in our hearts that we might yet lose the war. 
The 1 st had confidence without boasting, and dig- 
nity without punctiliousness; its pride kept it from 
dwelling on the excuses of unprotected flanks; it was 
on good terms with neighboring divisions and with 
the French: self-reliant, systematic, trying to live up 
to the fortune that had made it the first to arrive in 
France and was to make it the last to go home. It 



3 o8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had expected to pay a heavy price for its crowning 
success; and paid it with an absence of grumbling 
which makes the sacrifice of life of a transcendent 
nobility, however worn and filthy the khaki it wears. 
When relieved by the 42nd the 1st withdrew, 
after casualties of 8,554, in faultlessly good order 
from the line of the gains which it securely held. 



XVIII 

THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 

The " Liberty " Division trying to clear the Forest on its own — 
The battalion which refused to be lost — The " scalloping " 
succeeds — Out of the Forest — The 8and across the Aire — The 
77th takes Saint-Juvin, though not according to plan — And 
finally gets across the Aire to Grandpre. 

Its line the breadth of the Argonne Forest, no divi- 
sion could have waited more impatiently than the 
77th or " Liberty " Division of New York City 
upon the driving of the wedge on the eastern wall 
of the Aire and the clearing of the Aire trough, 
which, to serve its purpose, must be accompanied in 
turn by the progress of the " scalloping" movement 
of the French on their left. The " Liberty " men's 
apprehension lest they might not make the most of 
any advance on their flanks amounted to an obses- 
sion. If they halted, they found that the enemy had 
time to cut openings in the foliage to give his 
machine-guns fields of fire, string chicken-wire be- 
tween trunks of trees, build elements of trenches on 
the opposite slopes of gullies, and play other tricks 
in the tangles of underbrush. The best way to keep 
the German out of mischief was to keep him on 
the move. 

309 



3 io OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

On the 29th and 30th of September the " Lib- 
erty " men had made good advances, as we know. 
In the early days of October, while there was a lull 
in the offensive on other parts of our front, they 
were having a very busy time. As the " scalloping" 
movement against the escarpments at either edge of 
the Forest was delayed, they would try to do with- 
out this elbowing assistance on their flanks. As for 
being " expended," this was out of consideration 
while half of the Forest was yet to be taken. No 
other division had any rights in the Forest. It was 
theirs, with the understanding that they prove the 
nine points of the law by taking possession of their 
estate. They must keep on fighting until they saw 
the light of the Grandpre gap at the end of its dark 
reaches. Such a state of mind is conducive to fight- 
ing morale. There was a personal property interest 
at stake. 

On the morning of October 2nd, they made a gen- 
eral attack of their own. On the right in the Naza 
Wood they ran into a system of detached trenches 
and machine-gun positions which were invisible 
until the bullets began to sing and hand-grenades 
began to fly, while their exposed flank left no doubt 
that the Germans were still in force on the Taille 
l'Abbe in front of the 28th. The objective of the 
left was the Apremont-Binarville road. Not only 
were the " Libertys " a " pushful " division, but 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 311 

there was never any lack of pushing by their com- 
mander. The battalion on the left was told to keep 
on going until it reached the road, no matter what 
happened on its flanks. It obeyed orders. After 
it arrived, it found that there were no Americans 
on one flank or French on the other. Only Ger- 
mans. No messages came through from the 
brigade; messengers sent back disappeared in 
the woods to the rear, and fell into German 
hands. 

This was the incident of the " Lost Battalion." 
Technically, the battalion was not lost. It knew 
where it was on the map. Practically, it was isolated 
from the rest of the division — surrounded, besieged. 
Whether they are described as lost or not, the men 
of the battalion will not soon forget their experi- 
ence. When they went into action, they had two 
days' rations. As most of them had eaten one day's 
on the morning of the 3rd, they had the other day's 
to last them — they knew not how long. They did 
not have to expend much energy, except on patrols 
and outposts. The thing was to avoid drawing fire 
and wasting their ammunition. If they rose from 
their fox-holes, where they were dug in among the 
roots of trees on the northern slope of the ravine 
below the road, a spray of machine-gun fire, or the 
burst of a shell, convinced them that sedentary 
habits are best when you are fasting. At the bot- 



3 i2 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

torn of the ravine was a swamp which protected 
them on that side, while the crest of the ridge above 
the road protected them on the other. Their pleas- 
antest diversion was watching shells which missed 
their aim, harmlessly throwing up fountains of mud 
in the swamp. 

Some of the shells were supposed to have been 
fired by the French, who were said to be under the 
impression that the battalion must have already 
surrendered. The Germans held the view that it 
ought to surrender, according to rules. When they 
sent in a messenger with the suggestion, supported 
by the gratuitous information that the battalion was 
hopelessly surrounded, it was received not even 
politely, let alone sympathetically, by the reserve 
major in command, who had gone from his law 
office to a training camp. 

The major shaved every morning as usual. He 
never let the empty feeling in his stomach communi- 
cate itself to his head; he was as smiling and con- 
fident when he went among his men as if their situa- 
tion were a part of the routine of war. He had dis- 
posed them skillfully; they had learned by experi- 
ence where to dig in to escape fire; and they were 
amazingly secure, though they were surrounded. It 
became bad form to be hungry. When they put out 
panels to inform our aviators of their location, the 
panels only drew fire, and seem to have failed in 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 313 

their object as lamentably as the dropping of rations 
from American planes, which probably the Germans 
ate. 

Of course, the division was making efforts to- 
reach the battalion, being stopped by machine-gun 
fire. The 77th was fast held during those five days. 
Meanwhile the 1st had driven its wedge along the 
wall of the Aire, and on the morning of the 7th the 
82nd had begun its attacks in the valley, while the 
French were ready to move up on the western edge 
of the Forest. These successes, and the disposition 
of the 77th to take advantage of them, started the 
retirement of the Germans in the Forest. On the 
night of the 7th the survivors of the lost battalion 
rose from their fox-holes as the figures of Ameri- 
cans came through the darkness to their relief. 
Their first thought was food. Then they found 
that they had become heroes. There had been a 
compelling appeal to the imagination in the thought 
of this band of Metropolitans from city streets, 
stoically holding their ground when surrounded by 
German veterans in a forest in France. They did 
a fine thing, but no finer than many other battalions 
whose deeds attracted less public attention. 

Now, with the forest edges being " scalloped " 
according to the original plan, the 77th might carry 
out, after two weeks of travail, its mission of 
" mopping up " as the pressure on its flanks was 



3 14 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

relieved. On the 8th it conquered the Naza posi- 
tions, its right coming up even with the Taille 
l'Abbe. The next day, while the ist was making 
its second great attack, and the 82nd was again 
attacking the Cornay heights, while the French 
were rapidly advancing on the left, the 77th swung 
ahead for a mile and a half. The Forest was now 
to be the 77th's for the marching. The retiring 
enemy offered only rearguard action from machine- 
guns and concentrations of shell-fire on roads and 
open spaces, which were mosquito bites after the 
kind of opposition which they had been facing. All 
they had to do was to keep up their supplies and 
ammunition, — and that was a good deal over the 
miserable roads, — and pick their way through the 
thickets and in and out among the tree-trunks, 
across ravines, on to the gap of Grandpre at the 
Forest's end. 

By this time they were at home in woodland 
maneuvers, or on the 10th they would not have 
made nearly four miles in formation, combing 
every yard of the Argonne's breadth as they ad- 
vanced. That march showed a reserve of vitality 
in the city men worthy of the day when the 82nd 
in the valley had overrun the Cornay heights, and 
the ist and 32nd had reached the Kriemhilde 
Stellung. Patrols, encountering no resistance, came 
out of the Forest to see the promised land. Another 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 315 

stride, and the division would be in the open, facing 
the gap. 

On the northern bank of the Aire, about half a 
mile beyond its sharp turn toward Grandpre, is the 
village of Saint-Juvin. The river bottoms here are 
broad and swampy between the slopes which draw 
together to form the walls of the gap. From the 
fronts of the 1st and 32nd Divisions the frag- 
mentary trench system of the Kriemhilde ran north- 
easterly to a point just opposite the bend. Beyond 
this to the west the Germans depended upon the 
westward course of the river and upon the naturally 
strong positions on its northern side, culminating in 
the heights above Grandpre. The 77th's sector 
was extended slightly to the east to include Saint- 
Juvin, in order that the 82nd, which had taken over 
some of the front of the 1st, might undertake a 
movement against the Kriemhilde on the ist's flank 
east of the river bend, passing Saint-Juvin on the 
east. 

For four days the 82nd had been throwing its 
men into charges from the river bottom against 
heights, and wrestling against counter-attacks. 
Though it had conquered the trough of its north- 
ern course, the Aire river was still the nightmare 
of its evolutions. The left regiment remained fac- 
ing the westward bend. The center regiment was 
to cross the northern course of the river, south of, 



3 i6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the bend, at Fleville, and join the right regiment, 
which was already across. This it did under heavy 
fire on the morning of the nth, and, deploying, 
swung west in protecting the flank of the right regi- 
ment from the heights north of Saint- Juvin. 

The 82nd had already received enough shocks to 
be called a " stonewall " division, and had given 
enough to be called a shock division. It was not 
surprising, then, though wonderful, that the left 
regiment made two miles in face of the heights; or 
that the right regiment made a half mile more and 
by 8 A.M. had reached the Kriemhilde Stellung. 
Their exhaustion, instead of staying the All- 
Americas, appeared to give them a delirium of 
valor. When front lines were riddled by casualties, 
the second line " leap-frogged," and charged on 
into the machine-gun fire. One battalion had all its 
commissioned officers killed or so badly wounded 
that they could not move; another all but one. 
Non-commissioned officers continued the attack; but 
there was no hope at present of taking the 
Kriemhilde, with its fresh waiting machine-gunners 
in their interlocking positions supported by artillery, 
as the 32nd on the 82nd's left had found. The 
part of it in front of the 82nd was not to be taken 
in the general attack of October 14th — not until 
the final drive of November 1st. Exposed in a 
salient under cross-fire, the survivors of the right 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 317 

regiment were ordered to withdraw even with those 
of the center regiment, where, still under flanking 
fire in face of the heights, they held their ground. 

Meanwhile the left regiment was to cross the 
river westward of the bend, in order to assail the 
heights north and northeast of Saint-Juvin which 
commanded the village, and to protect the flanks of 
the other two regiments. The bridge near Saint- 
Juvin was down. A soldier going into attack under 
the weight of his pack and 220 rounds of ammuni- 
tion cannot swim a river. Patrols searched up and 
down in the darkness in vain for a ford. When the 
engineers, who were called in, started building a 
footbridge, they were greeted by bursts of machine- 
gun fire which suddenly ceased. Instantly the in- 
fantry rushed on to the bridge, which was completed 
at dawn, the machine-gun fire was renewed with 
great accuracy and increased volume. Dead and 
wounded fell into the water; survivors leaped into 
the water and sprang up the opposite bank, facing 
the unseen enemy. Parts of two companies got 
across, and boldly started out to envelop Saint- 
Juvin. After losses of fifty per cent from annihilat- 
ing machine-gun fire, the little band had to retreat 
across the river; but they had found that there was 
a ford near the ruins of the bridge. 

Though worn down until its battalions hardly 
averaged the size of full companies, the left regi- 



3i 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ment was across by the ford early the next day, and 
charging for the heights northeast of Saint-Juvin, 
in the first stages of an action which was to carry 
on through the general attack of the 14th. In order 
to rid the flank of machine-gun fire, an officer led 
his men into the edge of Saint- Juvin itself, and took 
nests and prisoners. The right of the attack 
reached the Ravine of Stones, joining up with the 
center regiment in front of the Kriemhilde. There, 
in a wicked pocket, they stove off counter-attacks, 
and fought in and out with the Germans in a hide- 
and-seek in the treacherous folds of the slope. 

In the general attack of the 14th the 82nd was 
once more called upon to show all the speed of a 
shock division fresh from rest in billets. Support- 
ing the 42nd on its right, which began its three days 
of terrific storming of the Chatillon Ridge, where 
the Kriemhilde bends southward in a loop, the 82nd, 
with its infantry effectives less than half of normal 
strength, again attacked the Kriemhilde. It actually 
got through the Kriemhilde, but again was in a 
salient, and after further heavy casualties had to 
withdraw. On the left it had swept over Hill 182, 
the commanding height to the rear of Saint-Juvin, 
in co-operation with the attack of the 77th which 
I shall describe. As the All-American division, the 
82nd was prolific in personal exploits. The ser- 
geant who brought in 129 prisoners, and became 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 319 

more famous than the division commander, had a 
worthy comrade in the western " bronco buster," 
who, finding himself in face of a group of Ger- 
mans on Hill 282, walked up to them, and, suddenly 
drawing his revolver, " took care " of the group. 
Then seeing a skirmish line of two hundred Ger- 
mans forming, he picked up a dead German's rifle 
and shot the officer leading the charge, before he 
rushed back and brought up his machine-gun com- 
pany to repulse the attack with the loss of half its 
numbers. 

Of course, the action of the 82nd was influential 
in the fall of Saint-Juvin, which the 77th, facing 
the westward bend of the river along the entire 
front, was to take by a neat maneuver, as its part in 
pressing the left flank of the Germans in the gen- 
eral attack of the 14th. It was concluded that the 
German, being a creature of habit, had probably 
arranged his barrage to protect Saint-Juvin from 
attack from the south. This was all the more 
likely against the heady Americans, who had a 
way in their exasperating energy of taking the bit 
in the teeth and driving straight through to an ob- 
jective. With one battalion making a threat in 
front, the other, crossing the river — which it man- 
aged to do most adroitly — from the east, would 
encounter little opposition. The event turned out 
entirely according to anticipation, except that the 



320 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

battalion which was to make the threat in front got 
out of hand, though in a manner which was bound 
to give a thrill to their commander even in his 
technical reproof. 

After fighting two weeks in the Forest, the men 
of this battalion were feeling their oats, now that 
they were in the open. They did not see why the 
battalion on the right should have all the honor and 
excitement of taking Saint- Juvin, while they were 
making faces at it on the side lines. Their eager- 
ness, according to the divisional report, turned the 
threat into an attack, with the result that they suf- 
fered from the barrage which the Germans laid 
down. At all events, they lost eight officers killed 
and twenty wounded in leading the men, who suf- 
fered in proportion, while the flanking battalion, 
with slight losses, entered the town on the after- 
noon of the 14th. The garrison tried to escape, 
but another little detail of prevision in the 77th's 
plan interfered. Accordingly the retreating Ger- 
mans ran into our curtain of machine-gun fire which 
we laid down northwest of the town, and were cap- 
tured. 

After Chevieres, a village on the south bank of 
the river, was also entered, the next nut to crack, the 
town of Grandpre on the other side of the river, 
was bound to be a bad one. It was a large town 
for this region, with a thousand inhabitants, resting 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 321 

against the bluff of the tongue of ridge which shoots 
out from the Bourgogne wood, which is the name 
for the southern end of the Boult Forest. The 
character of this bluff and of the " citadel " will be 
of more concern when we come to the thankless and 
bitter experience of the 78th Division in their as- 
saults. It is sufficient to say now that the bluffs and 
the houses of the town command the river bank and 
the narrow opening of the Aire valley to the south- 
ernmost projecting edge of the Argonne Forest. 
While the German on the defensive had machine- 
guns to spare for use in this Gibraltar, he would 
apply the tactics in which he was expert by making 
an attack on the town pay a heavy price, at small 
cost to himself. On the nights of the 10th and the 
nth, some patrols crossed the river and entered 
Grandpre, to meet with a reception as hot as it was 
enlightening. It was evident that Grandpre was 
not to be taken by a few daring men. We must 
cross in sufficient force to hold, and then only when 
at least a portion of the machine-gun nests in the 
town had been silenced. However, the patrols had 
found a ford. 

From their heights on the north bank of the 
river the Germans were covering all the approaches 
to the town with artillery, trench-mortar, and 
machine-gun fire clear to the edge of the Argonne. 
Where we appeared in obvious avenues of ap- 



322 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

proach, they brought down heavy barrages. The 
" Libertys " could not make a move in the open 
without being seen; but they kept on infiltrating 
forward with the rare canniness they had learned 
in fighting machine-gun nests through underbrush. 
By the morning of the 15th they were ready 
for the final attack. All day their artillery was 
pounding the town and approaches. All day they 
were maneuvering and advancing as they held the 
enemy's attention, until at dusk a detachment rushed 
the ford and entered the town. Other detachments 
built boat-bridges, and swam the river in the dark 
to add their numbers in making sure that we held 
what we had gained. All night plunging fire from 
the bluffs continued, and raking fire from the houses 
swept the streets, while the western and northern 
edges of the town were being organized to turn 
over to the 78th Division. 

Both river banks were ours; we had the gap, if 
not the citadel or the bluffs or all the buildings in 
the town, on the same day, it happened, that the 
British were at the gates of Lille. For nearly three 
weeks the " Libertys " had been in action. For all 
but five days of that time, they had been in the damp 
woods out of sight of the sun. In its taking of the 
Forest and of Grandpre and Saint-Juvin, and its 
subsequent advance to the Meuse after it came into 
line for a second time, the 77th had 4,832 casual- 



THE GRANDPRE GAP IS OURS 323 

ties, and captured 720 prisoners, 3,200 rifles, and 
pieces of heavy and 16 of light artillery. Even 
now, when they were to have a holiday, they 
were not to leave the Forest which their valor 
had won, but to settle down in the comfortable 
rest camps in its recesses — much better than the 
roofless and torn walls of villages — which the 
enemy had built in the days when he thought that 
he had permanently occupied this part of France, 
and when no Prussian of the Landwehr or a shock 
division ever dreamed of being dispossessed by 
draft men of New York City, who at that time had 
never had a rifle in their hands. 



XIX 

ANOTHER WEDGE 

The Marne Division — A wedge in the east over open ridges — 
Magnificent, but not war — A footing in the Mamelle trench 
' — Blue Ridge men hammering a way into the Ogons Wood — 
And into the Mamelle trench — A still hunt in a German head- 
quarters — The dead line of the Brieulles road. 

Our First Corps was still on the left, with the 
trough of the Aire now behind it. Our Fifth Corps, 
including the ist Division after its transfer from 
the First, was still in the center, and our Third 
Corps in the yet unconquered trough of the Meuse 
on the right. Departing from the arbitrary lines 
of the Corps, in following the movement for the 
conquest of the Forest and of the trough and the 
walls of the Aire to its conclusion, no mention was 
made of the other divisions from the flank of the 
32nd to the Meuse. All had been attacking with 
the same vigor as those to the left. 

On October ist the 3rd Division, under Major- 
General Beaumont B. Buck, had relieved the 79th, 
going in beside the 32nd. Its part is given sepa- 
rately from that of the 32nd, which was in the 
same, or Fifth Corps, because it was also to drive 
a wedge in the general attack of October 4th. Be 

324 



ANOTHER WEDGE 325 

it the 1st or 2nd, or the 4th or 5th, the 3rd consid- 
ered itself the peer of any regular division. It had 
become veteran without any trench service when it 
hurried to Chateau-Thierry to its baptism of fire, 
in the crisis of the third German offensive of the 
spring. I have described in my first book how, 
flanks exposed, it " stonewalled " on the Marne's 
bank against the fifth German offensive; and how, 
then swiftly crossing the Marne, it had joined our 
other divisions in the advance to the Vesle. Though 
its emblem was three white stripes on a blue field, 
indicating its three battles, it was sometimes called 
the Marne Division. The reputation for unflinch- 
ing endurance and bold initiative which it had won 
was now to be further enhanced in an action whose 
toll of casualties was second — and then by only one 
hundred — to that of the 1st, which drove the wedge 
along the Aire. 

Having come from Saint-Mihiel, its replacements 
absorbed in its ways, its units all fresh and trained 
in cooperation, it marched along the road through 
Montfaucon which was ever under shell-fire, and 
down the slopes in face of the guns of the whale- 
back, following the path where the 79th had " ex- 
pended " itself, with the spring of youth in its steps 
and confidence in the heart-beat of every man. 
Such was its pride and spirit that one would say 
that anything that this division could not do no other 



326 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

division could do. Judging by the sector and the 
mission to which it was assigned, this was also the 
view of the Army command. 

The line which it took over from Nantillois to 
the Beuge Wood was exposed to continual harassing 
fire. Before it were three bare irregular ridges, 
surmounted by commanding hills, with woods on 
the right flank. On the last of the three was the 
Mamelle trench, a part of the Kriemhilde Stellung. 
Army ambition, fondly contemplating the freshness 
and efficiency of the 3rd, saw it driving over those 
bare ridges, all the while under the guns of the 
whale-back, past flanking machine-gun fire from the 
wooded Hill 250 and Cunel Wood on the right. 
Piercing the Mamelle trench, it was to sink its 
wedge into the right flank of the whale-back, while 
the wedge of the 1st was sunk into the left flank. 
It was the precept of the Army that if you did not 
order a thing it would not be delivered. One never 
could tell. The 3rd might do a miracle. It had 
done something like a miracle on the banks of the 
Marne. The better a division was, the more was 
expected of it: which is only logical and human. 

The open ground on the front was excellently 
suited for tanks. Forty or fifty would have ap- 
proached a theoretically adequate number for the 
division's part in the general attack on October 4th. 
Unfortunately our troops had had little training in 



ANOTHER WEDGE 327 

maneuvers with tanks, and the few which the French 
were able to spare for the 3rd were of relatively 
little service. For its artillery support, the 3rd had, 
beside its own brigade, that of the 32nd. This 
appeared quite generous on paper — but not in sight 
of those ridges. Their crests should have been rup- 
tured by the high-explosive bursts of half a dozen 
regiments of heavy artillery, and received a shower- 
bath of shrapnel from half a dozen regiments of 
field artillery. However, there was the infantry — ■ 
we could depend upon the " doughboys " even if we 
were short of artillery. 

As a substitute for natural cover, a smoke-screen 
was helpful in obscuring the aim of the enemy's 
machine-gunners as the charge ascended the exposed 
slope of the first ridge. This was taken in the morn- 
ing under the cross-fire from Hill 250, which had 
resisted the attack on the right, while the enemy 
artillery fire from the whale-back searched the whole 
field of the advance. The dependable infantry, 
closing up the gaps in ranks torn by shell-fire, sway- 
ing, re-forming, and rushing on, had accomplished 
this much; but there were the machine-guns from 
250 sweeping the flank of the line on the ridge. The 
artillery was asked to pound 250; it did its best to 
answer this while it was answering other pressing 
calls. An effort to encircle 250 while it was being^ 
shelled was blasted back. No matter about 250; 



328 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

there was yet the second ridge to be taken ; and the 
afternoon was young. Before nightfall the men of 
the 3rd had reached its reverse slope, and were dig- 
ging in under shell-fire, while they received machine- 
gun fire not only from 250 but from Cunel Wood, 
which was now in flank of their advance. The 
Cunel was a small wood, but it was large enough 
for a host of machine-guns, and could not have been 
better placed for the German purpose. 

The next morning, October 5th, under artillery 
support, the men of the 3rd tried infiltration over 
the crest of the second ridge by all the tactics known 
to veterans. Apart from ample machine-guns and 
infantry in the trenches, the Germans had two field 
guns on the ridge, firing at point-blank range in 
directions where they would be of most service. 
Infiltration would not do. There must be artillery 
preparation, then a sweep over the crest behind the 
shield of a strong barrage. During the organiza- 
tion of this attack, there was no lull in the bitter 
and stubborn fighting. If lines became disarranged, 
there was no demoralization. The Marne division 
was second to no division. It meant to go through. 
The Cunel Wood must be cleaned up as a part of 
the program of taking the second ridge. A line of 
men, crouching, methodical, bayonets glistening, 
started across the open against the wood, and melted 
away in face of the spitting of the machine-guns. 



ANOTHER WEDGE 329 

Unflinchingly another line advanced, and still 
another, and they too melted away under that 
blaze from the wood's edge. Artillery preparation 
for the assault of the second ridge at 5 p.m. had 
included the Mamelle trench on the third ridge, 
where the Germans were known to be in strong 
force. The crest of the second ridge was gained. 
One company, targets against the slope for shells 
and machine-gun bullets, kept on until it reached the 
little Moussin brook in the valley. The German 
machine-gunners had this perfectly registered under 
an aim that swept the reverse slope. If the com- 
pany had continued advancing, any survivor who 
reached the Mamelle trench would have been taken 
prisoner. That night the machine-guns on 250 
were mopped up, which removed one source of as- 
sassination in flank. The 3rd was not keeping up 
with the lines drawn for it on the map, but it was 
making gains and holding them. 

Fatigue and the drain from casualties were begin- 
ning to tell. It was evident from the number of 
Germans and machine-guns in the Mamelle trench 
that the enemy meant to fight desperately for its 
retention. There was no storming it without 
thorough artillery preparation until something was 
done to take care of Cunel Wood on the flank. In 
conjunction with the 80th on its right, the 3rd again 
charged Cunel's machine-gun nests. They made an 



330 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

entrance, only to find that the depths of the wood 
were plotted with machine-gun nests which began 
firing when the edge was taken. After the repulse 
of the main attack, a sergeant and twenty men of 
the 3rd stuck to their fox-holes. The following day 
they were able to withdraw in small groups. Mean- 
while defensive positions were being organized on 
the second ridge. It was not a solacing fact to have 
the 32nd Division's artillery withdrawn at this 
juncture. In its place came a smaller force of 
French, who were welcome, but would have been 
more welcome if they had had more guns; but the 
British, the French, the Americans, and the Bel- 
gians, too, were using every available gun in the 
general offensive movement. 

On the 7th and 8th the 3rd remained dug in, pre- 
paring for the general attack of the 9th which on 
the Army's left was to free the Aire valley. That 
day the objective was to take the Mamelle trench 
and pass on through to the Pultiere Wood. Mean- 
while on the 8th there had been remorselessly close 
quarters work in attacks and counter-attacks in try- 
ing to take Hill 253 on the left, with the result that 
the end of the day left the two lines about seventy- 
five yards apart on the slope. Starting from the 
valley of the Moussin brook on the 9th, we swept 
into the Mamelle, overran it in places, lost parts of 
it, held other parts as the contest swayed back and 



ANOTHER WEDGE 331 

forth. On the 10th it was hammer-and-tongs again, 
as we made further gains supported by barrages, 
only to find as the barrage lifted that the guns from 
the whale-back were bursting shells on our heads, — 
and units were again in salients of interlocking 
machine-gun fire. The advantage gained was not in 
distance, but in cleaning up some of the machine- 
gun nests, which allowed us to hold on to more of 
the Mamelle. The nth was a repetition of the 
same ferocity of initiative and resistance in the same 
kind of wrestle. It had been a test of endurance 
in sleepless effort between the men of the 3rd and 
the Germans, and the grit of the 3rd had won. 

All this time the 80th on the left, which was 
swinging past the trench, was suffering from flank- 
ing fire from the machine-guns which the 3rd was 
trying to overcome. On the night of the 12th, the 
3rd relieved units of the 80th, extending its sector. 
This frequent realignment in divisional sectors only 
made more difficult the repeated re-forming of the 
lines within the sector due to set-backs and casual- 
ties. The next day the elements of the 3rd which 
had taken over in the Peut de Faux Wood found 
themselves, after a terrific outburst of shell-fire, 
facing a strong German counter-attack. They had 
resisted German attacks before this on the Marne. 
At one point they withdrew from the line of the 
barrage; but when the barrage lifted, and they 



332 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

looked the enemy infantry in the eye at close 
quarters, they never budged. 

There may have been faults in the command of 
the 3rd in this baffling problem of tactics on open 
slopes and ridges where communications were under 
the fire of artillery from both the whale-back and 
the heights across the Meuse, but there was no fault 
in the dependable infantry. Here, as along the rest 
of the front in the middle of October, we were 
learning that the enemy, having lost advantageous 
ground in the defense of the whale-back, was to hold 
the final heights with all the more stubbornness. In 
the successes from October 4th to nth the 3rd had 
won one of the most conspicuous. After two weeks 
in line its endurance was not exhausted. It was now 
to begin preparing for the general attack of October 
14th, which is another phase of the battle. 

Support on its right flank, which had been essen- 
tial to its progress, had been given by the peripatetic 
Blue Ridge men. The veterans of Stonewall Jack- 
son's flying columns would have felt at home in the 
80th Division. We know how well it had fought 
for three days in the initial attack that broke the 
old fortifications. On September 28th, when the 
80th had been " squeezed out " of the narrowing 
Third Corps sector, its artillery and one infantry 
regiment had also remained in the fighting with the 
4th Division, while the three other regiments had 



ANOTHER WEDGE 333 

been marched around to be in readiness to assist the 
37th in repelling a counter-attack against the Mont- 
faucon woods. Now the Blue Ridge men were re- 
turned to become the left flank of the Third Corps 
on familiar ground. For such rapid travelers 
Army ambition had set a no less rapid pace on the 
map than for the 3rd. They were to keep on driv- 
ing until they were through the Kriemhilde Stellung 
between Cunel and the Meuse. It was not fair to 
call them a fresh division, unless hard fighting and 
hard marching were counted a warming-up exercise, 
and going without sleep a tonic. 

The first of the many hurdles in the steeple-chase 
planned for them was the Ogons Wood, whose 
machine-guns had shattered the attacks of the 79th 
on September 29th; but this was ancient history in 
a battle whose processes were so swift. It happened 
six days ago. We were in a new era ; we were mak- 
ing another general attack as powerful as that of 
September 26th. The clock had run down on Sep- 
tember 29th; it was wound up again by the 4th. The 
80th had only to repeat its own successes in the first 
three days of the battle, and it was in Cunel. The 
staff must always talk in this encouraging fashion; 
but there was no reason to believe that there were 
fewer machine-guns in the Ogons Wood than when 
the 79th had been repulsed. Possibly their number 
had been increased during the stalemate period from 



334 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

September 29th to October 4th. There was one 
way of finding out — by sending a wave of human 
targets over those open slopes toward the wood's 
edge. 

The machine-guns began firing with the me- 
chanical regularity of a knitting machine, instantly 
the attack began. The Blue Ridge men were not 
surprised at this, or at receiving high-explosive 
shells from two directions. If they had not known 
from their own previous experience, the men of the 
long-suffering 4th Division on their right could have 
told them that once they were in the woods the 
German gunners would be slipping gas shells into 
their gun tubes in place of the H. E.'s used against 
them in the open. It was the quantity of shells and 
bullets that was unexpected. The enemy shell-bursts 
were keeping pace with them as automatically as 
their own barrages, and beyond their own barrage 
the enemy was laying down a stationary barrage 
awaiting their advance. Machine-gun fire increased 
with every step. 

There was no continuing against such a shower 
of projectiles and hissing of bullets. A halt was 
called. A battalion of reserves was brought up 
while the artillery was told where to concentrate 
its fire; separated units were brought together, 
re-formed on a new line ; tanks came up on the left 
to assist in the second charge at 5.30 p.m.; but the 



ANOTHER WEDGE 335 

enemy had only held his fire, waiting for the second 
charge to start. It came nearer the Ogons, but when 
darkness fell the Blue Ridge men were still lying 
in the open, south of the wood, the enemy's guns 
still keeping up an intermittent galling fire, which 
was falling alike on the dead and the wounded and 
the survivors. Patrols filtered into the woods dur- 
ing the night — and the Blue Ridge men had a gift 
for such work — only to learn that a few enterprising 
scouts, in their stealthy crawling, if they wished to 
escape massacre or being taken prisoner, had to 
avoid drawing fire. 

Attack again ! Keep on trying ! The next morn- 
ing all the machine-guns were ordered up to send a 
barrage of bullets over the heads of the charge into 
the edge of the woods. This had been efficacious 
on other occasions, but it was not this time, as the 
infantry knew instantly they rose to advance, when 
the deadly refrain from the edge of the woods 
showed no more diminution than the wrath of the 
guns from the heights. Ground was gained in 
places between the swaths of the machine-guns' 
mowing; but no part of the line penetrated the 
woods, though it was close to the woods when it 
was stopped. Attack again ! Keep on trying ! The 
enemy will break if you try hard enough! The 
wedge must be driven, whether through woods, over 
slopes, or through trenches. Again reorganization; 



336 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

again the line re-formed to make the most of gains; 
again the artillery ordered to concentrate on the 
woods for an attack at 6 p.m. This time the jump- 
ing-off place was so near the woods, that the Ger- 
mans, when the barrage descended upon them, were 
as a rule disinclined to wait for the charge. Many 
who remained held up their hands. The men felt 
relief at being at last no longer a target in the open 
as they made swift work of mopping up the whole 
of the Ogons. 

The next day, the 6th, the divisional artillery as- 
sisted the 3rd in its efforts for the Mamelle 
trench. Patrols trying to reach the trenches north 
of the Ogons — which incidentally was being gassed 
— ran into an array of machine-gun nests, and 
brought back information about what was in store 
for the next attack; for the German, as we know, 
was much in earnest on the east flank of the whale- 
back. On the night of the 6th the brigade which 
had been in front during these two days was relieved 
by the brigade in reserve. On the 7th and 8th, while 
there was more or less of a lull in the battle every- 
where except in the Aire valley and the Argonne, 
the 80th was busy with patrols, locating enemy pill- 
boxes for the information of the artillery, and pre- 
paring for its part in the general attack of the 9th 
all along the line — the attack that brought us up to 
the main line of defenses at many points — the third 



ANOTHER WEDGE 337 

great attack of the battle. September 26th, Octo- 
ber 4th, and October 9th are the three dates. 

The 80th did not start at daylight, the same hour 
as the 3rd on its left. Its thrust waited on the 
advance of the 3rd to a certain point. At 3.15 the 
word came for the 80th to attack. After fifteen 
minutes of furious artillery, the first wave rose and 
moved forward in face of the machine-guns, while 
the enemy brought down a curtain of shell-fire in 
front of the second wave when it rose, in order to 
keep it from supporting the first, whose ranks were 
being rapidly thinned; but all the powers of destruc- 
tion which the enemy could bring to bear could not 
stay the men of the fresh brigade in their hard-won 
stages of progress, now that the slopes and the 
Ogons were at their back. They took the strong 
point of the Ville-aux-Bois farm, and still going 
after dark they reached the Cunel-Brieulles road. 

There was a familiar sound to that word 
Brieulles. The 80th on September 28th had at- 
tacked the hills in front of this town at the bend in 
the river. Brieulles was still in the enemy's hands, 
but the village of Cunel was ahead in the dark night. 
There must be numerous Germans in Cunel. In 
stealthy audacity two companies of the Blue Ridge 
men now turned a trick that would have rejoiced the 
heart of Jeb Stuart or Colonel Mosby. They slipped 
into Cunel very quietly, and returned with two 



338 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

crestfallen German battalion staffs — thirty officers 
and sixty men — whom they had caught completely 
by surprise. 

The next morning the enemy had his revenge of 
the kind which his hidden long-range artillery in its 
lofty positions out of reach of our guns might take. 
An attack was ordered for 7 a.m. As it was form- 
ing, and the morning light dissipated the mist, the 
watchful German observers were taking notes and 
passing the word to the gunners in Brieulles and in 
the Rappes and Pultiere woods. The minute-hands 
were near the " H " hour on wrist watches, and the 
line ready, when a concentration of screams came 
from three directions, and geysers of earth and shell 
fragments and gusts of shrapnel had something of 
the effect of a volcanic fissure opened at the men's 
feet. Officers were killed or thrown down by the 
concussion in the midst of their hasty directions. 
Two companies were decimated, two others scat- 
tered in confusion, by this sudden and infernal visita- 
tion ; but this did not mean that the Blue Ridge men 
were to give up making the attack. They re- 
organized and charged according to orders. The 
enemy guns which had caused such havoc in their 
ranks disputed their advance. Against this whirl- 
wind they managed to go beyond the Brieulles-Cunel 
road, but could not hold their positions. The Ger- 
mans made the road a dead line, and for days to 



ANOTHER WEDGE 339 

come its ribbon was to be the clear gray background 
upon which human targets were clearly visible to 
their watchful gunners. The " pinch-hitting " 80th 
was the only division thus far that had been twice 
in the battle line of the Meuse-Argonne. Before it 
went in again, its infantry was to have a real rest, 
though its artillery, engineers, and ammunition 
train remained to support the 5th Division which 
took its place. 



XX 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 

The bull-dog 4th — Enfilade shell-fire from a gallery of heights — 
Driving and holding a salient — A second try — As far as it 
could reasonably go — Reversing Falkenhayn's offensive — The 
33rd builds bridges — To cross and join the Blue and Grey 
Division in a surprise attack — A bowl of hills — The Borne de 
Cornouiller holds out. 

On the 8oth's left during the advance of October 
4th- nth was the bull-dog 4th Division, under its 
bull-dog commander, Major-General John L. Hines, 
which had been continuously in line since the first 
day of the battle. Hines had been trained in the 
school of the pioneer 1st. When he was with the 
1st, he considered that it was the "best" of the 
Regular divisions. Since he had been in command of 
the 4th, he had changed his mind as the result of 
maturer judgment and more experience in the field. 
The 4th was now the "best" of the Regular divi- 
sions. The question of whether or not it was the 
" best " of all our divisions, including National 
Guard and National Army, so enlarges the field of 
rivalry that it must be left to the decision of divi- 
sional historians. 

No one on the Army staff considered relieving 

340 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 341 

the 4th before the attack of October 4th. If any 
man of the division thought of relief, he knew that 
the bull-dogs might not expect it when they were 
in a position where the Army could not afford to 
allow them to loosen their grip on the enemy. What 
incoming division could familiarize itself on short 
notice with that treacherous front in the trough 
of the Meuse river, which the 4th knew by expe- 
rience ? 

Its right rested in the woods on the west bank of 
the Meuse, while the German front line was four 
miles back on the east bank on its flank. Enemy 
machine-guns had hiding-places on the banks not 
only of the river but of the Meuse Canal, which fol- 
lows the course of the river. Beyond the river bot- 
toms, on the east bank, were many patches of woods 
on the first slopes, which brought field artillery 
within range of the 4th's front, while the heavy artil- 
lery in the ravines and woods around the Borne de 
Cornouiller, or Hill 378, was also in range. To 
this quite gratuitous bombardment, entirely out of 
our own battle zone, from the eastern gallery upon 
the pit of the amphitheater of the 4th's action, we 
had no means of replying. It must be accepted with 
the same philosophy as an earthquake or any other 
violence of nature. In front of the 4th's right flank 
was the town of Brieulles in the river bend, which 
held batteries of field guns, its surrounding swamps 



344 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

fore they burst, for slipping out from under bar- 
rages without losing their heads, and thus keeping 
their formations, and for filtering in between con- 
centrations. It was amazing how many German 
shells were required to make a casualty in the 4th; 
otherwise there would not have been enough men of 
the division left for a charge on the morning of 
October 4th, when their waves went forward with 
that suppleness of adaptability which is the differ- 
ence between drill-ground and veteran precision. 

Their line of advance in the open plowed by 
shells, they carried all the machine-gun nests in the 
Fays Wood, put the wood behind them, and reached 
the Cunel-Brieulles road. So they had driven home 
their wedge, a very sharp-pointed one. Their left 
flank was exposed to the Ogons Wood, which the 
80th could not reach in its repeated charges, and to 
the Cunel Wood beyond, which the 3rd had not 
taken, and to the guns of the whale-back. On their 
immediate front they faced the machine-gun fire 
from the western portion of the Peut de Faux Wood 
on their left, and on their right from a series of 
trenches on a ridge which supported the Kriemhilde, 
while the increasing volume of fire on both flanks 
emphasized the German intention to permit no rash 
American flying column to slip down the river val- 
ley in flank of the whale-back. Thus the advance 
was in the narrow angle of a murderously sharp 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 345 

salient on bad ground. This could not be deepened 
into the jaws of hell; it could not be retained except 
at a futile sacrifice. The bull-dogs could dodge shells 
from across the Meuse, but they could not dodge a 
hose play of machine-gun bullets coming from both 
flanks. If they managed protection in one direction, 
they could not manage it from the other. Skillfully 
making a virtue of necessity, they withdrew in the 
night to the line of the Ville-aux-Bois farm, where 
they were still in a salient, but one which their craft 
in taking cover and their tenacity could hold, and 
did hold against three determined counter-attacks 
under strong barrages against the Fays Wood. On 
the 9th the tactical plan required that they mark time 
until the 80th had reached a given point, as the 80th 
in turn waited on the advance of the 3rd. The day 
was overcast; it was already dusk at 5.40 P.M., when 
word was given for the 4th to charge as the start of 
three days' fighting more bitter than the division 
had yet known. 

Draw a line east and west through the 4th' s front, 
and it would now have passed to the north of the 
Borne de Cornouiller, whose guns were throwing 
their shells into the right rear of the charge. Their 
fire was joined by that from all the other galleries, 
while the machine-guns from Brieulles swept a field 
of targets revealed by the light of bursting shells. 
Barrages of gas shells were laid across the path of 



346 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the charge and into the woods ahead. This was par- 
ticularly trying in the gathering darkness, over 
ground where landmarks could not be distinguished. 
The bull-dog did not take hold this time. There was 
nothing to grip except the murderous flashes. To 
go on was only to court a fearful casualty list and 
inevitable confusion and disorganization in the dark- 
ness, which could not be readily repaired. 

The troops were recalled, while the German gun- 
ners continued to shell the field of their advance, 
thinking that they wer*e still moving forward. The 
next morning, they started early in order to have a 
full day before them. In face of the same kind of 
deluge of gas and shells, and trench-mortar in addi- 
tion to machine-gun fire, and under the support of 
their own barrage, they made one bite of the tongue 
of Martinvaux Wood with its trench line on the 
right. They passed through the eastern portion of 
the Peut de Faux Wood, where the undergrowth 
was dense and there was no protecting men with a 
barrage. Advance elements charged across the 
ravine into the larger Foret Wood; but it was hope- 
less to try to consolidate in the midst of gas and 
machine-gun fire from the depth of the wood. By - 
this time the line was past Brieulles, whose guns and 
machine-guns were of course stabbing the flank at 
close quarters. 

Brieulles, considering the cost of taking it, was 



r IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 347 

not so important to immediate Army purpose as 
thrusting the wedge into the flank of the whale-back. 
So Brieulles, which was not to be ours until we won 
the whale-back three weeks later, had to be borne; 
and it was the way of the 4th to bear such thrusts 
in the ribs without flinching, as it prepared for 
another attack the next day under the plunging fire 
from the galleries. Beginning again at 7 A.M., when 
it had finished its day's work it was through the 
gassed Foret Wood, and had sent its patrols up on 
Hill 299 beyond. This was the high-water mark 
of its arduous and glorious part in the battle. It 
had gone as far as anything but tactical madness 
would permit, until the heights of the whale-back 
and east of the Meuse could be broken. Until 
October 19th, it held its gains under continual 
gassing and cross artillery fire. 

Twenty-three days in the welter of the Meuse 
slopes, it had been able to remain all that time in 
gassed woods and ravines in cold autumn rains, 
owing to its character that made every ounce of 
energy answer a resolute will to well-directed ends; 
for this bull-dog also had something of the nature 
of the opossum and the panther. It knew how to 
spring. The depth of the division's advance was 
eight miles, and the marvel of this was that every 
yard since the first day had been gained in frontal 
attack against machine-gun nests protected by supe- 



348 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

rior artillery fire. It had taken 2,731 prisoners and 
44 guns, some of them of large caliber, with a loss 
of 6,000 officers and men killed and wounded. A 
proud division the 4th, with the right to be proud, 
though it had no parades in its honor, as its per- 
sonnel came from all parts of the country, when it 
returned home. 

During the latter days of its service, it began to 
realize that our own artillery fire was increasing. 
This seemed almost too good to be true, and of 
course, as the men remarked, it came after the 4th's 
offensive work was over. The fact was that our 
army was receiving more guns. It was also noticed 
that there was less flanking artillery fire. This was 
due not only to our attacks on the Romagne posi- 
tions, which absorbed more and more of the atten- 
tion of the German gunners of the whale-back, but 
also to the driving of still another wedge, this time 
on the east side of the Meuse — the wedge which at 
one stage of the battle the 1st was intended to 
drive before that on the Aire wall became more 
vital. 

The farther we went, the more bitterly we 
realized the murderous handicap of a force advanc- 
ing on exposed slopes on one bank of a river, with 
its flank at right angles to the other bank held by the 
enemy far back of its reserves. After the attack of 
October 4th on the right went forward naked to this 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 349 

terrible flanking fire, the French Seventeenth Corps, 
in support of the forthcoming attack of the 9th, in- 
cluding two American divisions, the 29th and the 
33rd, under its command, was to make a drive from 
the old trench system at Samogneux — the start line 
of the German Verdun offensive of 19 16, and oppo- 
site the line from which our army had started on 
September 26th — down the east bank of the Meuse. 
The French engaged at many points on the Allied 
front were short of troops; but despite all the calls 
from other points the high command had finally 
fixed its eye on the Borne de Cornouiller. 

Our Illinois men of the 33rd Division had been 
holding our side of the river bank, dug in in face of 
the other bank and the German flank, with only divi- 
sional artillery to answer the long-range artillery 
from the heights. Having won attention for its 
brilliant swinging movement which brought its front 
to the river bank on the first day of the battle, the 
33rd was now to undertake a far more difficult, and 
a spectacular and daring, maneuver. Every veteran 
from Caesar's day on the Rhine to Grant's and Lee's 
on the Potomac knows what it means to force a 
crossing of an unfordable stream under fire. In this 
instance it must be done under frowning heights, in 
the days when machine-gun bullets carry three thou- 
sand yards, and shells, according to the caliber of 
the gun, from three to seven times as far. There 



350 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

were to be two bridges; one at Brabant, 120 feet 
long, and one at Consenvoye, 1 50 feet long. 

In building their own exclusive road over the 
Mort Homme, which enabled the rolling kitchens to 
bring up hot meals to the infantry, the Illinois engi- 
neers had shown their capacity for " rustling," which 
they now applied in gathering material for their new 
task. In broad daylight, in full view of the enemy's 
guns which forced them to wear their gas masks, 
they brought their boards and timbers to the river 
bank and did their building. Shells were falling on 
their labors at Consenvoye at the rate of ninety an 
hour; but that did not interrupt their labors. Men 
fell, but others kept on the job. Punctuality was a 
strong point with the Illinois men. The bridges 
must be up on time, and they were. 

The time of crossing depended upon the move- 
ment of our 29th Division, coming up on the east 
bank as the flank of the advance of two French divi- 
sions. At 9 A. M. the 29th passed the word, and the 
regiment of the 33rd which had been assembled in 
the Forges Wood rushed for the bridges. Night 
would have been a more favorable time for cross- 
ing, perhaps ; but that was not on the cards. All the 
divisional artillery was pounding the opposite bank 
as a shield, while the French artillery was also busy, 
and the advance of the infantry on the other bank 
was drawing fire. Thoroughly drilled for their 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 351 

part, the Illinois men lost no time in the crossing, 
which was- effected with slight casualties. Now 
under command of the Seventeenth Corps, joining 
up with the flank of the 29th, it worked its way for 
a mile and a half up the river bank until it dug in 
at night on the edge of the Chaume Wood after a 
faultless day's work. 

In the operations east of the Meuse now begun, 
I shall describe only the actions of our own divisions. 
The 29th Division, under command of Major- 
General Charles G. Morton, had taken the name of 
the " Blue and Grey." Many of its Guardsmen 
were grandsons of veterans from New Jersey, Dela- 
ware, and Virginia. After nearly two months in the 
quiet trench sector at Belfort, it had been marched 
on the night of the 8th past the ruins of villages in 
the Verdun battle area for its initiation into two 
weeks of fighting, which showed that one side of 
the trough of the Meuse had no preference over the 
other in the resistance which the enemy had to 
offer. 

A system of hills extending from the Verdun forts 
to the Borne de Cornouiller formed the walls of a 
bowl, which the French Corps in a fan-shaped move- 
ment was to ascend. Their slopes were wooded and 
cut by ravines commanding the bottom of the bowl 
itself, which was irregular, but everywhere in view 
of the heights. The 29th was to drive straight 



352 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

toward the Borne de Cornouiller. Upon its success 
on the first day, may it be repeated, depended largely 
the success of the 33rd's crossing of the Meuse. 
The farther away from the river, the stronger were 
the enemy's positions. Advancing without any artil- 
lery preparation, the 29th took the enemy completely 
by surprise. It was twenty minutes before he 
brought down his artillery fire. This gave the Blue 
and Greys a good start. After hot work at close 
quarters they captured Malbrouck Hill, which was 
a strong point in the German support trench system 
of Verdun days. Then passing across the open 
under increasing German gun-fire, they overran all 
the machine-gun nests in the dense Consenvoye 
Wood. There they were halted by orders to allow 
the division on their right to come up. Combat 
groups which had reached Molleville farm and the 
Grande Montagne Wood were called in, and the 
position consolidated during the night. The enemy 
by this time was fully awake to the plan of the 
Seventeenth Corps. He unloosed that torrent of 
shells and gas from the heights of the rim of the 
bowl which was not to cease for three weeks. 

Its right exposed after an advance of three miles 
on the 8th, digging in under the bombardment and 
repulsing counter-attacks, the 29th was not to at- 
tempt to advance on the 9th; but the 33rd had 
orders to go to Sivry on the banks of the Meuse, 



IN THE MEUSE TROUGH 353 

whose possession was most important. By noon it 
had fought its way through Chaume Wood, and by 
dark its patrols, infiltrating around machine-gun 
nests and under machine-gun fire from the slopes 
were in Sivry. All that night it was under gas and 
shell-fire. The next day it must make sure of Sivry. 
The 29th was to attack on its right in support. 
Despite the artillery concentrations on the whole 
movement laboring in the bowl, we were still to try 
to break through to the Borne de Cornouiller. This 
was a vain ambition, which the Illinois men and the 
Blue and Greys none the less valorously tried to> 
achieve. 

The 33rd had brought more reserves across the 
river, which had to pass through powerful artillery 
barrages to relieve the decimated battalions at the 
front. They actually reached the ridge east of 
Sivry, right under the guns of that towering Hill 
378 of the Borne de Cornouiller. On their right 
the 29th again and again charged for the possession 
of the Plat-Chene ravine, which was a corridor swept 
with plunging fire from right and left and in front, 
and saturated with gas. Casualties were enormous* 
in keeping with the courage of this new division 
inspired by the heritage of both Blue and Grey. It 
was futile to persist in the slaughter of such brave 
and willing men; futile for the 33rd to try to hold 
the exposed salient of the Sivry ridge; but every 



354 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

shell they received was one spared our men on 
the slopes of the west bank of the Meuse. Aus- 
trian troops which had been holding the line against 
them were replaced by veteran Prussians and Wur- 
temburgers, who knew how to make the most of their 
positions, and who answered attacks with counter- 
attacks. As the left flank which must not yield the 
river bank, the 33 rd intrenched in the Dans les 
Vaux valley through the Chaume Wood. We were 
within a mile of the Borne, but what a horrible mile 
to traverse. The first stage of that detached battle 
east of the Meuse, so important in its relation to the 
main battle, was over. Its second stage I shall 
describe later. 



XXI 

SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 

John Pershing of Missouri following Petain and Nivelle — Training 
his chiefs — The solidity of Liggett — From schoolmaster of 
theory to Army command — The wiry Bullard — His mark on 
the pioneer division — The inexorable Summerall, crusader, 
martinet, and leader of men — The imperturbable Hines. 

When from the window of a luxurious office thirty 
stories above the pavement I looked down upon the 
human current of Broadway, and over the roof- 
tops of the tongue of Manhattan, and across the 
bridges to other roof-tops, and upon the traffic of 
bay and river, I thought of that little room, first 
door to the left upstairs, in the town hall of Souilly, 
where more men than all of service age in all the 
city of New York had been commanded in two of 
the greatest battles of history. The " sacred road " 
to Verdun took the place of Broadway; the volcano 
of unceasing artillery fire, the place of the city's 
muffled roar. 

In this little room Petain had said, " They shall 
not pass," and so wrought that they did not pass; 
and Nivelle had shown me his maps and plans for 
the brilliant re-taking of Douaumont and Vaux in 

355 



356 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the fall of 19 1 6, which was to make him commander- 
in-chief as the exemplar of a system of attack upon 
which he staked his reputation in the Allied offen- 
sive of 19 17. In those days no one dreamed that 
American khaki would stream along the " sacred 
road," and American guns again set the hills trem- 
bling with their blasts; or that John Pershing of 
Missouri from this little room would direct the 
largest force we had ever sent into action in the 
battle which was to be the final answer to German 
aggression. 

The Chief of Staff's room, its walls hung with 
maps, was across the hall from the Commanding 
General's, as it had been in the Verdun days. Then 
as now it sent across to the General's desk slips of 
paper with the digested news of the battle, which he 
could follow by reference to his own maps. Now 
as then a cloistered quiet pervaded the building 
which had been the center of a small town. Order- 
lies stood on guard, and adjutants on guard above 
them. The lights behind the black-curtained win- 
dows burned late, as on the basis of the day's news 
plans for the next day's action were made — plans 
for another advance against the Germans, this time, 
instead of resistance to their advance. 

" You never know what is in the C.-in-C.'s mind, 
and how it is coming out," said his aide. " When 
it comes, it comes quick and definite — just like the 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 357 

outburst of a bombardment for an offensive which 
has been weeks in preparation." 

He listened to many counselors; but the decisive 
counsels he held behind the locked doors of his own 
mind. Those who thought they knew what he was 
going to do knew least; those who received the 
most affirmative smile bestowed in silence might 
receive the most positive of negative decisions when 
the time came. He was charged with " snap " 
judgments on some things; and with unduly delay- 
ing over others — while he smiled over both criti- 
cisms. In all events his word was supreme. Men 
might contrive to defeat his orders, but no man 
dared dispute them. He had continued to grow 
with the growth of his army; his grip of the lever 
strengthened as the machine became more pon- 
derous. Others might build the parts of the ma- 
chine ; he brought them together in his own way and 
his own time. 

We had started with divisions; then organized 
corps staffs; then appointed corps commanders; then 
organized the staff of the First Army, now in the 
MeuserArgonne, and afterward the staff of the Sec- 
ond Army, now at Saint-Mihiel. He was still com- 
manding both armies as general in the field. When 
would he choose their commanders? Professional 
army gossip had an ear out for rumors. Possibly 
the Commander-in-Chief did not know himself; pos- 



358 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

sibly he was waiting on the test of battle to find the 
two most worthy to lead. On the night of October 
nth his choice was made; it was announced by his 
calling up some generals on the telephone. Two 
learned that they were promoted from corps to 
army command, two that they were promoted from 
division to corps command. 

It was no surprise to learn that Major-General 
Hunter Liggett was to have the First Army, and 
Major-General Robert L. Bullard to have the 
Second Army. Liggett, who was already a major- 
general of regulars, had been considered as a pos- 
sible commander of the A. E. F. when we first de- 
cided to send an army to France. If ever a soldier 
looked as if he could " eat three square meals a 
day " without indigestion, it was Liggett. Over six 
feet in height and generously built, his majestic 
figure would attract attention in any gathering. 
[There was a depth of experience shining out of his 
frank eyes, and he radiated mellowness, poise, and 
reserve energy. The army knew him as a thorough 
student, sound in his views, which he could express 
with compelling force. No one questioned that he 
had a mind capable of grasping military problems 
down to their details, and a resourcefulness in the 
" war game " as played at the War College which 
fitted him in theory for the direction of immense 
forces. 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 359 

Large bodies move slowly, though with great 
momentum when they start, and the sceptic's ques- 
tion about Liggett was whether or not he had energy 
in keeping with his mentality. McDowell made 
excellent plans for Bull Run, and lost it. McClellan 
seemed an ideal leader, but lacked convincing power 
of action, though he built a machine which others 
were to direct. 

A full corps in the plans of the A. E. F. was six 
divisions; and when, early in 191 8, Liggett was 
assigned to the Command of the First Corps, he 
had one division which had been in the trenches, and 
three others about ready to go into the trenches 
under the direction of the French. All the other 
corps which were to come would look to his example 
in pioneer organization. Settling down in the little 
town of Neufchateau, he formed his staff and set to 
work organizing his G's of operations, intelligence, 
supply, transport, preparatory to taking over our 
first permanent sector. 

Thus far his authority had been little more than 
paper routine under the French. He was a school- 
master of theory. Then the March German offen- 
sive against the British left him with a corps staff 
which was a fifth wheel in present plans, just as he 
was about to have his sector. His best divisions 
were being sent to the Picardy battlefront while he 
remained at Neufchateau, having an internal Amen- 



360 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

can authority over any divisions in the trenches 
in Lorraine, but even these were under the direct 
command of French corps. He accepted the situa- 
tion in a manner in keeping with his mental and 
physical bigness. He kept on working on his 
" war college " organization at his headquarters 
while, operating under the French at the other 
side of France, his divisions were taking Cantigny 
and making a stand on the Paris road and on the 
Marne. 

The commanders of these divisions, however, 
were winning distinction for themselves through 
actual battle experience, and some of them would 
soon be taking command of our new corps com- 
posed of our rapidly arriving divisions, which raised 
the question if, when the time came to have a com- 
mander for the First Army, Liggett would not be 
passed over from very want of any except theoretical 
preparation. No one worried less about this than 
Liggett. He seemed anything but ambitious. Yet, 
pass over Liggett ? That enormous, calm, thorough- 
going Liggett! He loomed tall as his six feet, and 
broad in proportion, at the thought. I always think 
of him leaning over a table studying a map, with 
the intensity of a student who was never men- 
tally fatigued. 

When was he to have any battle experience? If 
we were to have an integral army to attack the 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 361 

Saint-Mihiel salient, our corps commanders must 
have other than paper training. General Pershing 
arranged that Liggett take corps command of an 
American and a French division in the Marne 
counter-offensive. This brought him into close asso- 
ciation with the French army command in the midst 
of a great movement. Later, in its operations at 
Saint-Mihiel, everybody said that " Liggett's corps 
had done well," and said it in the way that took 
for granted that Liggett was bound to do well. He 
is not the kind of man, as I see him, who sets peo- 
ple into a contagion of cheers, or the kind of man 
who makes enthusiastic enemies or equally enthusi- 
astic partisans. Rather he is like some sound office 
member of a great law firm, who does not make 
speeches or appear in court, but who, other lawyers 
say, is the buttress of the firm's strength. 

I remember a distinguished civil official from 
home talking of our generals, and saying, when I 
suggested Liggett: "Why, he is the one I didn't 
meet," which was not surprising. A certain isola- 
tion that he had was due less to any personal exclu- 
siveness than to the fact that he was a large body 
well anchored to his maps and his job. 

In the Meuse-Argonne battle his corps had the 
wicked front on the left against the Argonne Forest 
and the valley of the Aire; and again he did well, 
leaving no doubt th?.t he had energy as well as 



362 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

capacity, or that he deserved the three stars of 
a lieutenant-general which General Pershing now 
placed on his shoulders. Later, in the drive of 
November 1st, his maneuvering of our corps and 
divisions, in that swift movement in pursuit and in 
the crossing of the Meuse which gave us the heights 
on the other bank, seemed without a tactical fault 
in its conception and execution, and it warranted the 
use of the word brilliant in thinking of Liggett, who 
in the closing days of the war had the opportunity 
to show the cumulative results of his study of his 
maps from the days when he began sawing wood in 
Neufchateau. He was a modest, sound soldier, an 
able tactician, and a delightful, simple gentleman, 
who did his country honor in France both as soldier 
and as man. His place at the head of the First 
Corps was taken by Major-General Joseph T. 
Dickman. 

Both he and Major-General Robert Lee Bullard, 
who received command of the Second Army, then 
holding our line won in the Saint-Mihiel operation, 
were broad-minded men of the world who would 
have made their mark in any profession. Physically 
you could make two Bullards out of one Liggett. 
My most distinct picture of him was of his slight 
figure in his big fur coat in the midst of winter rains 
and sleet, while his small head, with his close-fitting 
overseas cap, only made the coat appear the larger. 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 363 

In his command of the 1st in the Toul sector and 
in our first offensive at Cantigny, he had set his 
mark on our pioneer division. The French liked 
him, and he could speak their language with the 
attractive Southern accent of his boyhood days. 
He took the French liaison officers into his family 
and set them to work, and they became so fond of 
his family that one of them was overheard telling 
French staff officers what a lot they had to learn 
from the Americans. If Bullard could not eat three 
square meals a day, it did not interfere with his 
belligerent spirit. His brain was just as good a 
fighting brain as if he had eaten beefsteak for break- 
fast, lunch, and dinner. However bad his neuritis 
in the winter days, his blue eyes were always 
twinkling, and when he came into his mess and the 
officers rose, his smiling request that they dismiss 
the formality was all in keeping with the atmos- 
phere of that division command. 

His dry, pungent wit was not affected when the 
doctor put him on a diet of an egg and a bit of toast. 
It always came back to the fact that war was fight- 
ing. We had much to learn from the French, from 
the British, from all veterans, and you could not be 
too brave or too skillful. If you made up your mind 
to lick the other fellow, you were going to lick him. 
When his neuritis was very bad at one time, he told 
General Pershing that he did not want to stand in 



364 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the way of a successor. General Pershing replied 
that he would not forget the reminder; and re- 
marked to someone else : " Bullard's division is 
doing well. The neuritis hasn't gone to his head." 
His body seemed to be made of elastic steel wire 
that always had the spring for any occasion, and 
the more fighting he had the better his health be- 
came. In the Argonne battle his neuritis entirely 
disappeared. 

He never seemed very busy. In the midst of bat- 
tle you would find him appearing at seeming leisure ; 
and his attitude always was: " What a fine, able lot 
of men I have around me ! They do all the work 
for me." Thus he developed brigadiers out of his 
colonels. 

When he corrected subordinates, it was with a 
simple phrase that cut through the fog of discussion. 
One day, before an operation, one of his colonels 
who was a little wrought up on the subject told him 
of a number of young officers in his regiment who 
might be brave, but who were not up to the mark 
of leadership. " You think it over coolly and make 
me a list of those you are sure about," said Bullard. 
" It's a matter for your judgment. Perhaps these 
officers will do better in some service that is not com- 
batant, or perhaps they need a little lesson which 
will make them all right in some other regiment. 
Make me the list, and I'll have everyone on it re- 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 365 

lieved right away " — and you may be sure that the 
colonel made the list with care. 

The Third Corps had been tried out in the Marne 
salient. In the Meuse-Argonne battle it had seized 
the bank of the Meuse to protect our right flank, 
and against superior raking artillery fire from the 
heights of the whale-back and across the river, on 
the slopes and in the woods of the Meuse trough, 
gained the Cunel-Brieulles road with an indomitable 
skill, which proved his contention that, however 
heavy the odds, if you make up your mind to lick 
the other fellow you will. 

In the instances of Liggett and Bullard, both gen- 
eral officers before the war, high rank had shown 
its worthiness of higher rank in the swift merciless 
test of war's opportunities, while the other two 
officers who received telephone messages from the 
Commander-in-Chief had both been majors when 
we entered the war. I had first met Charles P. 
Summerall as a lieutenant in Riley's battery on the 
march to the relief of Peking. When I next met 
him, he had the artillery brigade of the 1st Divi- 
sion. He was given the command of the 1st when 
Bullard was given a corps. The way in which he 
sent the veteran division through toward Soissons 
in the Marne counter-offensive was a precedent for 
the way in which he sent it as a wedge over the Aire 
wall, which won him command of the Fifth Corps. 



366 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

In the last days of the war no one of Pershing's 
generals was more talked about in the A. E. F. than 
he. His was a personality of the kind which was 
bound to make talk. No one ever denied that he 
was a fighter and that he knew his profession. He 
could make men follow him, and make men fear 
him. They called him a " hell-devil of a driver," 
but won victories under him. If he had started as 
a private in the French Revolution, and had not been 
killed too early in his career, I think that he would 
have had one of the marshal's batons which Na- 
poleon said every private carried in his knapsack. 
If no general expected more of his soldiers than 
Summerall, no general expected more of himself. 
Sturdily built, of average height, he was tireless. 
He could go about the front all day, and work at 
headquarters all night; or go about the front all 
night, and work at headquarters all the next day. 
When officers and men were numb from fatigue, he 
gave an example of endurance as a reason for his 
further demands on their strength. " If you win, 
your mistakes do not count," he told a group of 
officers one day. " If you lose, they do. If you 
win, your men have their reward for their wounds 
and suffering, and those who have fallen have not 
died in vain. If you fail, your men feel that all 
their effort has been wasted. Do not fail. Go 
through ! " 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 367 

It was said of him, as it was said of Grant, that 
he was not afraid of losses. Like Grant, he was a 
hammerer. Pershing could depend upon him, as 
Petain could depend upon Mangin, to " break the 
line," and as Lee depended upon Jackson to arrive 
on time and ahead of the enemy. Considering the 
objectives he gained, his admirers regarded him as 
a master economist of lives, as he was, comparing 
what he gained for a given number of casualties 
with what many other divisions gained for their 
casualties. With an iron will he applied the prin- 
ciple that he who hesitates in war is lost. If you 
keep the upper hand, the enemy suffers more heavily 
than you. Summerall's standard was always what 
he was doing to the enemy, and his attitude toward 
the enemy was not that of a professional soldier 
who regards war as a game in which you are testing 
your wits against an adversary. He would at times 
exhibit a Peter the Hermit fervor when he spoke 
of his soldiers' crusade against the barbarians, or 
pointed out to them ruined villages and heart-broken 
peasants as another reason for charging again. 
With his staff around him in the midst of an action, 
he gave an impression of thorough grasp of their 
parts and his. In this, as in everything he did, he 
had a touch of the histrionic. He was most con- 
cretely modern in arranging his patterns of bar- 
rages, and at the same time it occurred to an ob- 



368 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

server that it would have taken only a change of 
garb and hardly of mood to make him perfectly at 
home among the knights before the walls of 
Jerusalem. By this time you will understand that 
he is of a type whose characteristics entreat a 
writer to fluency, and that there are several Sum- 
meralls. 

There was the Summerall who might turn up at 
any point on his front at any time and talk to his 
men, while an officer stood apprehensively by, won- 
dering what might happen to him; a Summerall who 
rounded on officers and men for carelessness about 
details that would mean a habit of carelessness 
which would accompany them into action; a Sum- 
merall surprising young officers who considered him 
a ruthless driver by telling them that they were 
working too hard — when it seemed to them that 
they never could work hard enough to please him 
— and that they must not worry over their maps and 
orders in a way to keep them from getting enough 
sleep to insure the strength necessary for self- 
command and the command of their men. Again, 
he would speak of his men and particularly of their 
deeds of initiative with a gentle, worshipful awe, as 
if every one were greater than any marshal of 
France in his estimation; again, he would be telling 
his young officers that they could not be worthy of 
their men, but that he expected their most devoted 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 369 

effort to that end. The men would always follow 
if they knew how to lead. He made it an almighty 
honor and a responsibility to be a second lieutenant, 
and yet he would censure colonel, lieutenant, or 
private in a manner which assuredly no politician 
would ever use in order to win the vote of a con- 
stituent. When an officer and a number of men 
standing in a group were all hit by the same shell, 
he had a glaring example to demonstrate how un- 
trained we still were when an officer would allow 
soldiers to gather round him and become a target 
for the enemy's artillery, thus losing their lives 
without taking a single German life in return. The 
sight of those bodies spoiled the victory for Sum- 
merall. He burned the picture in the minds of his 
men in the course of their drills. One lieutenant 
said that if the spirit of the officer who had been 
the center of the group could have been given the 
chance to come back to earthly life, he might refuse 
it in fear of the lecture he would receive from 
Summerall for his inefficiency. 

All the different Summeralls were the different 
strings to his bow in applying his teachings and gain- 
ing his ends, while he was unconscious of there 
being more than one Summerall. He was the 
A. E. F.'s negation of the propagandic habit of 
building up the characters of generals from one 
common attribute, when every one of them, whether 



370 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

French or British or American, was an individual 
human being. 

When you went to Summerall's headquarters by 
day, you were pretty certain, unless there were a 
big action in progress, to find him absent, looking 
in on divisional, brigade, regimental, or battalion 
headquarters, moving about among the guns and 
transport and troops — wherever it pleased him to 
go in his insistence upon keeping in close human 
touch with the forces under his command. He left 
routine to his staff officers, and he expected much 
of his chief of staff. How his staff officers, hard 
master though he was, respected his ability! 

He could be forensic on occasion, as he was 
searchingly brief at others. It was not beneath his 
military dignity to make a speech, either. On the 
day before the great final attack on November ist, 
when the German line was broken, he was out from 
morning to night, gathering officers in groups 
around him and addressing his soldiers, reminding 
them of their duties on the morrow, when there 
must be no faint-heartedness. They must go 
through. When he returned to his headquarters, 
hoarse from talking in the raw open air, General 
Maistre, who had come from Marshal Foch, was 
there, and General Pershing came in a little later. 
Both asked the one question of Summerall: would 
he go through? He answered that he would, with 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 371 

the positiveness that he had been instilling into his 
troops. 

If he had ever failed in one of his drives, there 
would certainly have been a smash, but he made no 
blind charges. He wanted to know where he was 
going, and he wanted to be sure that he had his 
bridge of shells for the men to cross in their ad- 
vance. He prepared his lightnings well, but when 
they were loosed he would not stay them. 

Major-General John L. Hines, the new com- 
mander of the Third Corps, had been a colonel 
under Bullard in the 1st Division, and had com- 
manded the bull-dog 4th Division in the Third 
Corps, under Bullard, in the trough of the Meuse. 
He was of a wholly different type from Summerall, 
with whom he shared the honor for swift promotion 
won in the field. It was said of him that he was 
the best linguist of the A. E. F., as he could be 
equally silent in all languages, including English. 
If the accepted idea of General Grant is true, he 
and Grant could have had a most sociable evening 
together by the exchange of a half dozen sentences, 
of which I am certain that General Hines would 
not have used more than his share. 

He came to France with General Pershing as a 
major in the adjutant-general's office, where he 
served for some time before he was sent to a regi- 
ment. He seemed to be out of place at a desk. It 



372 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

was like asking taciturn Mars — and I suppose that 
Mars was taciturn — to do drawn work. Sandy of 
complexion, sturdily built, he had that suggestive 
quiet strength, militarized by army service, which 
we associate with Western sheriffs who do not talk 
before they shoot. Without his having said a word, 
you understood, by the very way in which he was 
taciturn, that if you were in a tight place you would 
like to have him along. I used to think that if a 
section of the floor had been blown up in front of 
his desk while he was signing a paper, the shock 
of the explosion would not have interfered with 
the legibility of his signature. There was some- 
thing in his manner which soldiers would respect. 
They, too, saw that he would be a good companion 
in a tight place. When someone had a troublous 
problem on hand, he would say: "Let me have it. 
I'll take care of it." He took care of it promptly 
too, once he had the paper in his strong hands. 

Whether as a major or as a corps commander, 
he was quick to appreciate that a subordinate was 
preoccupied with unimportant things, and he had 
seen enough red tape in the old adjutant-general's 
office to know how to amputate it without too much 
hemorrhage. In common with Summerall he too 
had the endurance which no amount of work seems 
to faze, and that clarity of thought and readiness 
of decision which thrive on crises. He, too, went 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 373 

among his troops, impressing them with his cool, 
unchanging personality, his bull-dog tenacity, and 
his implacably aggressive spirit. 

Having spoken his messages over the telephone 
which called to greater service the adjutants who 
had served him well, General Pershing might move 
about his far-flung kingdom again, though he was 
not to be long away from the battlefront. Nbth- 
ing in the A. E. F. was better regulated than his 
own time and movements. Wherever he was, his 
special train was waiting upon him. In these later 
days he had a car fitted up as an office, with aides 
and stenographers in attendance. When the train 
pulled out from a station, two automobiles were on 
board. They were in readiness when the train ar- 
rived at its destination. If he had only a hundred 
miles to go, it was covered in the night while he 
was asleep. The day's beginning found him where 
he chose to be, at Marshal Foch's headquarters, at 
the main headquarters at Chaumont, in Paris, or 
at either Army headquarters. If he wished to speak 
over the wires, they were instantly cleared of other 
messages. The President of the United States may 
only ask a senator or a governor to come to see him; 
but a word from the C.-in-C. for any officer to re- 
port to him at a certain hour and place was an 
order. One might come clear across France for the 
ten-minute conference which was set down in the 



374 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

schedule of appointments on the pad of the aide to 
the C.-in-C. The democracy had bestowed unlim- 
ited autocracy and responsibility, too, upon John J. 
Pershing. 

He had become the creature of this responsibility, 
determined to be equal to it, his human impulsive- 
ness of other days now and then flashing out at the 
circle of authority that hedged him in, and his indig- 
nation cleaving with broad-sword blows the links of 
bureaucracy that plotting minds had forged around 
him. 

At last after fifteen months his plans had achieved 
fruition. If he had not had imagination, he could 
not have visualized the structure before he began 
its building. Out of his window in that little room 
of the town hall, which had a significance that none 
of his other headquarters had, as he turned from 
jhis map he looked down upon the " sacred road " 
to Verdun, which was the main street of Souilly. 
Motor trucks came and went, and at one side of 
the town hall the staff cars stood in military line, 
waiting upon the commands of generals and colonels 
whom they served. The houses of the little town 
had not room for all the office force of First Army 
Headquarters. This had overflowed into many 
temporary buildings with walls of tar-paper, where 
all the different branches, to the tune of the hosts 
of typewriters which was the " jazz " of staff com- 



SOME CHANGES IN COMMAND 375 

mand, worked and had their messes. They sent out 
the leading, if not always, perhaps, the light, through 
the battle area, where the trucks surged all night and 
all day on the roads, going forward laden with am- 
munition and food and returning empty, where the 
ambulances went forward empty and returned laden, 
behind the vortex of the struggle. How was all this 
power, and how were the men who exerted it on a 
twenty-mile front in France, brought from home? 
Long before Marshal Foch had summoned our 
troops to the attack in the Meuse-Argonne, General 
Pershing had made his plan of how they should be 
concentrated as the right flank of an Allied move- 
ment. To carry this out he was to depend upon 
another adjutant. 



XXII 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 



Pershing's right-hand man — From the center of power to the field 
— Radical measures for the Services of Supply — Our own 
Goethals — Varied personnel united in discontent — Regulars 
and experts — Harbord's two problems of construction and 
morale. 



As President, Theodore Roosevelt had made 
Pershing a brigadier over the heads of a small 
host of senior officers, and had likewise singled out 
Sims, who was to command in European waters. 
When he was forming his division, which destiny 
was not to allow him to lead in France, he chose for 
one of his brigade commanders James G. Harbord, 
then a major of regulars. Harbord was not a West 
Pointer; having begun his army career as a private, 
his rank was not high for his years when we entered 
the war. Had the competition of civil professions 
applied in the army, it is safe to say that he would 
have been a major-general already, and that some 
of the colonels who were his seniors would still 
have been lieutenants. It is only instruction that one 
receives at West Point or at any college ; education 
is for the graduate to receive in after life, a detail 

376 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 377 

he sometimes neglects. Harbord educated himself 
by study and observation in the leisure hours which 
army officers have for the purpose. 

One's first thought upon meeting him was to won- 
der why he should have enlisted in the regulars. 
He seemed to be the type that would have become 
in another environment a judge of the Supreme 
Court or the president of a university. After one 
came to know him, it was evident that he was in 
the army because he was naturally a soldier. He 
was also to prove to be the kind of organizer who 
in civil life is a good mayor of a great city or the 
efficient head of a large corporation. 

As Chief of Staff of the A. E. F., he was 
Pershing's right-hand man for our first ten months 
in France. 

It was not long before observers began to appre- 
ciate that he was one of the officers capable of 
" growing " with the growth of his task. One of 
the acquirements of his self-education was lucid and 
concise English, whether dictated to a stenographer 
or written on his little folding typewriter. When 
you brought a question before him, there was action, 
unfettered by qualifying verbiage. He did not 
41 pass the buck " to the other fellow, according to 
the habit which army regulations and restrictions 
readily develop. When he went into Pershing's 
room, adjoining his, with a bundle of papers, and 



378 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

returned with them signed, there was finality. He 
could be tart as well as brief, in the face of prolix 
and meandering reports or memoranda. " If this 
man really had something to say," he remarked one 
day after he had read ten typewritten pages, " I 
wonder how many more pages he would require." 

Next to Pershing himself, Harbord was most 
familiar with the planning and forming of an or- 
ganization which would be equal to handling an 
unprecedented problem, three thousand miles from 
home. That story about the old quartermaster, 
who said that everything was going beautifully until 
a war came along and ruined his organization, had 
a most palpable application when a department 
which had carried on the routine of supplying our 
small regular army had to design a service equal to 
our demands in France. It was unequal to the task. 
A new and comprehensive system which experience 
had demonstrated to be suited to our needs divided 
the activities of the army into two territorial depart- 
ments. One, that of the zone of advance, running 
from the outskirts of our training area in Lorraine 
to the front, was to have charge of the fighting. 
The other was to see that the fighters reached the 
front and were supplied when they arrived. His 
headquarters at Tours, the Commanding General of 
the new Services of Supply — the " S. O. S.," as the 
army knew it — was to be the head of a principality, 




SCALE OF MILES 

O 25 SO 7S IOO 200 

1 M I MAM LINES OF COMMUNICATION 



MAP NO. 10 

SERVICES OE SUPPLY. SHOWING POETS AND KAILKOAD 

COMMUNICATIONS. 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 379 

of almost the breadth of France itself, under the 
kingdom of Pershing. 

One day, when at last our long period of drill and 
preparation was having the substantial result of 
making our pressure at the front felt in earnest, 
Pershing said: " I'm going to send Harbord to 

troops, but I shall have him back " the plan 

being to have him back as Chief of Staff, I under- 
stood. Harbord had his desire, the desire of 
every soldier, for field service. A brigadier-general 
now, he was given the brigade of Marines in 
place of Brigadier-General Doyen, who had been 
invalided home, where he died, as the result of hi& 
hard service in France. One week I saw him in the 
barracks building at Chaumont, surrounded by hun- 
dreds of adjutants, in the direction of the whole, and 
the next week I found him in charge of one part — 
but that a very combatant part — of the whole : with 
no stenographer, but writing his reports and orders 
on the little folding typewriter. 

His new command required the tact of a man of 
the world as well as of a soldier among soldiers. 
There are no better fighters than the Marines; none 
prouder in their spirit of corps. The only Marine 
brigade in France was not pleased at the thought of 
having a regular in command. It wanted one of its 
own corps. Harbord had not been about among the 
officers and men many times before the Marines 



380 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

were saying, " Well, if we had to have an army man, 
we're glad we've got Harbord." By the time they 
were fighting in Belleau Wood, they had put their 
globe insignia on his collar, which he was proud to 
wear. He was adopted into the Marines, while 
regular officers were saying that he had better make 
his transfer official. 

His record of the battle was a model of military 
reports, which did not hesitate to acknowledge mis- 
takes in detail, the point being that the Marines won 
the wood. Promoted to be a major-general and to 
command the 2nd Division (which included the 
Marines), he led the race-horse 2nd in the counter- 
offensive in the Chateau-Thierry operations, which 
was the turn of the tide against the Germans. 
After this success the next step for him seemed to 
be a corps command, and possibly the command of 
an army, in the course of the rapid promotions that 
were due to care for the immense forces now arriv- 
ing in France. His division had only just been re- 
lieved, when he received a hurry call to go to 
Chaumont. When he arrived, Pershing looked him 
over to see how he had been standing the strain of 
two months of severe fighting, after his ten months 
of harassing strain as Chief of Staff. Harbord ap- 
peared fresh, and ready for another year's hard 
work. 

" Harbord, I'm going to send you down to 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 381 

straighten out things in the S. O. S.," Pershing then 
told him. . . . 

" Well, you see what my general has done to me," 
Harbord remarked a few hours later in an outburst 
to a friendly ear. " He's taken me away from my 
division, — but," he added, " he's my general. He 

knows what he wants me to do " Then a toss 

of the head, and from that moment his thought was 
concentrated on his new duties. 

Things had been going badly in the Services of 
Supply. There was congestion at the ports; con- 
struction work was not proceeding. In view of the 
enormous demands which would arise when we 
should have two million men, instead of the million 
we had planned, in the autumn, the situation had 
suddenly become most serious. Washington, with 
our own ports sensitive to delays at those on the 
other side of the Atlantic, had about decided to 
send General Goethals to France to take charge of 
the Services of Supply as a co-ordinate commander 
with General Pershing. This was a radical depar- 
ture. It meant two commanders in France instead 
of one, directly responsible to Washington. Such 
divided authority in such a crisis stirred the appre- 
hension of every soldier lest in a great crisis the 
fighting branch should not be supreme over every 
other branch which served its will and necessities. 
The simplest of military principles required that 



382 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the commander of the forces at the front must com- 
mand the whole, or his fearful responsibility for 
needless loss of life rested on inadequate authority. 
Harbord, Pershing's right-hand man, was the 
counter to Washington's suggestion; that major of 
cavalry, whom nobody knew in the days when 
Goethals was building the Panama Canal, would 
prove that we already had a Goethals of our own 
in France. Without going over the ground of the 
pioneer stages of the Services of Supply, covered in 
my first book, the requirement upon which all trans- 
port depended was construction. We must enlarge 
the plant which France offered us for our needs. 
This meant building new docks to accommodate the 
requisite shipping, webs of spur tracks, immense 
areas of warehouses at the ports and others inland 
to accommodate our supplies; plants for assembling 
our railroad locomotives and cars brought from 
home; repair shops for them, and for guns and gun 
carriages, ambulances and aeroplanes and automo- 
biles, motor trucks, and all other vehicular trans- 
port. More important still, there must be repair 
shops for human beings — enormous hospitals for 
caring for the sick and wounded, who might come 
by the hundreds of thousands in a single month. 
Hospital trains must be ready for their transport 
from the front. Enormous bakeries must provide 
hundreds of thousands of loaves every day. There 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 383 

must be barracks for the nurses and all the workers ; 
barracks for the aviators and helpers who were 
drilling; lighters for disembarking troops when they 
arrived; camps, where they could spend the night 
ashore. Railroad sidings must enlarge railroad 
capacity; more spur tracks must be built wherever 
we had railheads at the front, and regulating sta- 
tions which should dispatch the trains to the rail- 
heads. Around quiet villages must arise temporary 
cities of our building, connected with all the other 
activities in a system which was punctual and de- 
pendable. 

The S. O. S. had been arranged to meet the de- 
mands of an army in our own sector. Its plan was 
disrupted by the switching of our troops to Chateau- 
Thierry and Picardy to meet the German offensives. 
The mobilization for Saint-Mihiel brought us back 
to our own sector. After Saint-Mihiel came the 
Argonne concentration, called into being by the hope 
of a speedy end of the war through one supreme 
effort by all the Allies. Should our new troops, 
thrown in action without sufficient preparation, and 
the veteran troops, thrown in without time for re- 
cuperation after Chateau-Thierry and Saint-Mihiel, 
go without food and ammunition, we might have a 
disaster. The wisdom of our insistence that we 
could form and supply and fight an integral army, 
instead of infiltrating our men into the British and 



384 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

French armies, was on trial. Victory and our sol- 
diers' lives were at stake. 

The battle was to be fought not only against 
machine-gun nests, but in the sweating effort of 
stevedores, of mechanics, and laborers, in the roar 
of foundries, in the rattle of trains far from the 
sound of the guns. For officer personnel in the 
S. O. S. we had first, of course, the regulars, those 
of the old quartermaster department and of the 
engineers, who would not ordinarily command 
troops, and those who could be spared from the 
zone of advance where every able fighting officer 
was required. These must be few, compared to the 
numbers of the whole. Second, we had all the men 
in the thirties, forties, and fifties, experts in every 
calling, who had come to France in their enthusiasm, 
in answer to the summons, in the days when the thing 
was for every man to serve in uniform in France. 
These were too old for combat, even if they thought 
they were not. They could not stand the physical 
hardship of the front, however brave their spirit. 
The S. O. S. was the place for them. There, or in 
building the organization of supply at home — which 
was primarily important — the nation could make 
the best use of their training in civil life. Third 
were younger officers, from the Guard or a training- 
camp, caught by the card-index system classifying 
occupations, and separated from their regiments be- 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 385 

cause they were experts in some line of activity 
which was short of personnel in the S. O. S. They 
knew how to fight; but their knowledge of some- 
thing else, their superiors thought, not they, was 
more useful to the nation. 

For mechanics we had all the men skilled in 
trades at home who were as ready to give up high 
wages for a soldier's pay, and to work double union 
hours, as they would have been to stick tight in a 
fox-hole against a counter-attack, if they had had 
the chance. These came in their thousands, living 
under conditions far more miserable, in contrast to 
their habits, than their officers — from railroad trains 
and shops, bakeries, cement factories, contractors' 
firms, and every industry on the list — the typical 
American army, which has made industrial 
America. 

For labor we had all we could pick up abroad: 
able-bodied German prisoners, middle-aged and in- 
valided French territorials, Senegambians, Turcos, 
Belgians, Spaniards, Chinese, Annamites. From 
home we had, aside from expert labor, chiefly the 
colored men, who had no rivals in " rustling " 
cargo. At the docks their giant strength and their 
good-natured team-play were supreme; but they 
were in evidence all the way forward to the shelled 
roads which they were repairing back of the front 
where their kinsmen had their place in line. 



386 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The feeling between the regulars and reserves, 
which I shall describe in general terms elsewhere, 
was bound to be most acute in the S. O. S. Suffice 
it to say for the present that it was a gospel with 
the regulars that they should hold all the high com- 
mands in the S. O. S. as well as at the front. It 
was granted that the regulars must be absolute in 
the zone of advance, and all reserves their pupils 
or " plebes "; but how was the manager of a great 
railroad, of a bakery, of a contracting firm, a 
chemist, a civil engineer who had built tunnels and 
bridges, or a business organizer, to feel that a 
regular officer was his superior in his own line? 
The answer of the regular was that only he under- 
stood how to coordinate all policy for military end, 
— the old, old answer of the inner temple of mys- 
tery, from the days of the Egyptian priests to the 
present. The regulars said, too: "How can we 
tell who is the real expert? These big men from 
civil life are jealous of one another. To appoint 
one over the heads of others would bring friction. 
We know war. Supply is a part of war. And we 
shall keep matters in our own hands " and pro- 
motions, too, as the reserves might whisper. 

A point which the regulars dwelt upon even more 
emphatically was that the reserve officers did not 
know discipline and army forms. Some of these 
reservists had directed thousands of men in organi- 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 387 

zations at home, without knowing how to drill a 
company. In their experience, building railroad 
yards and warehouses did not require military eti- 
quette. The men under them held even stronger 
convictions on the subject. They were doing the 
same kind of work that they did at home, and amid 
peaceful surroundings. If they were workmen and 
not soldiers, why should they have to submit to all 
the distinctions between rank and file? Must they 
salute every man with a gold bar who happened to 
pass along, when he was no nearer the front than 
they? He was not their boss. What mattered, 
except that they were " on the job "? Why did not 
these officers pay more attention to getting the 
tools and material whose lack hampered progress? 
The officers could only turn to their seniors, who 
turned to other seniors, on through the channels 
of authority, to the lack of shipping, and to the 
plants at home, where the workmen were being 
driven equally hard, but did not have to wear uni- 
forms and crook elbows in salute. As for army 
forms, the reserve officers were ready to comply 
with them if they could find that there was any set- 
tled system; but army forms seemed to change to 
meet the requirements, as the reservists sometimes 
thought, of delaying action, when that suited a com- 
manding officer's idea. 

Meanwhile, why should the assistant to the chief 



3 38 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

baker be an infantryman? Not that he wanted to 
be in the S. O. S. : he wanted to be at the front. 
Was the baking of bread taught only in the army? 
For the army, yes, thought the regulars. The com- 
plaints of the soldiers about the quality of the 
bread, which were warrantable, seemed to indicate 
that the regulars might have escaped blame by giving 
the responsibility to a civilian baker. A reserve 
officer whose business was automobile manufacture, 
serving in a repair shop under a cavalryman, did 
not deny that the cavalryman knew how to lead a 
squadron in a charge, but did he know about mending 
broken motor trucks? The civil engineer, who had 
once executed a contract for five millions, as he re- 
ported to a young West Point engineer who had 
been a lieutenant when we entered the war, might 
ponder the difference between theory and practice. 
A regular engineer lieutenant-colonel of twenty-nine 
said: " From what I have seen of the eminent civil 
engineers, I should think that they ought to be 
my subordinates." He was young; so was Napo- 
leon at Marengo and Austerlitz. Both were sol- 
diers. 

When reserve officers, because of their expert- 
ness, were given authority, it did not mean that they 
were always able to exercise it. One who came to 
France under the express condition that he was to 
be supreme in his branch found that he was made a 
subordinate. What could he do ? Resign ? Resign 



A CALL FOR HARBORD 389 

in time of war ? There was another to whom Gen- 
eral Pershing said : " You go ahead. I give you 
carte blanche in your work." One day he was 
called on the carpet by his regular senior for acting 
on his own authority. "Who told you to do 
this?" asked the superior. 

"General Pershing!" 

" Well, then you better report to him. You go 
tell him you have been insubordinate, you haven't 
been doing things through channels, and see what 
he says." 

This was putting the Commander-in-Chief himself 
to the test of regular loyalty. 

" You tell that narrow-minded regular for me," 
said Pershing, " to leave you alone." 

This did not mean that the reserve officer was left 
alone. He could not carry all his troubles to the 
busy Commander-in-Chief, as he struggled against 
the system. 

The reservists, both officers and the whole force 
of workers, were not meeting as a rule the best class 
of regulars. A brigadier or a colonel in the zone 
of advance, who was wearing himself out physically 
and mentally, or who for less temporary reasons was 
not efficient, was relegated to the rear, with the idea 
that he might be good enough for the S. O. S. Yes, 
anything was good enough for the S. O. S., thought 
its pestered, nerve-racked workers. Was that 
colonel or brigadier, who had served his country for 



39o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

twenty or thirty years, to be made subordinate to 
some railroad man, civil engineer, or manufacturer, 
who had been in uniform only a few months? He 
might be sent home ; but surely not on the invitation 
of General Peyton C. March, Chief of Staff in 
Washington, who had his own domestic problem in 
derelicts without the further annoyance of importa- 
tions. So the colonel or the brigadier was cared 
for in the S. O. S., all the while feeling keenly his 
humiliation at not having command of a regiment 
or brigade in combat operations. If he were wise 
enough to serve his country and keep his health, he 
only signed the papers turned in by an energetic 
subordinate, be he regular or reserve; but if he were 
mischievous in his insistence upon authority, he 
clogged the wheels of organization, — which is not 
saying that he was not a worthy, honorable, and 
agreeable gentleman, even if he were not of much 
service in building a bridge or a warehouse in a 
hurry, or in forcing five days' rations through to a 
division at the front. Considering these things, and 
considering that every man tied to some humdrum 
task in the S. O. S. wanted to be up under fire instead 
of one, two, or three hundred miles away from the 
guns, it is not surprising that the spirit of corps of 
the S. O. S. was not good. It was well that Har- 
bord arrived in July; or he might have been too 
late. 



XXIII 

THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 

Depending on Tours — The " front-sick " S. O. S. — Harbord not 
" Bloise " — Getting his men together — Building morale — 
Troops as freight — Brest to the front — Construction figures — 
Atterybury's job — Sorting supplies at Gievres — Hospitals and 
the product of war — Feeding the front from Is-sur-Tille — The 
point of the wedge at the railheads. 

If one division at the front knew little of what 
another division was doing, how much less its men 
knew of what was doing in the capital of the 
Services of Supply at Tours, that ancient city in the 
center of France. Grand Headquarters in the town 
of Chaumont, and Army Headquarters in the vil- 
lage of Souilly, were relatively small office affairs, 
compared to Tours. 

In place of tables of barrages, maps of trench 
sectors, photographs of combat areas, reports of 
hills and villages and lines of resistance taken, and 
the examination of prisoners, which formed the 
staple routine of a combat headquarters, there were 
tables of the daily amount of tonnage and the num- 
ber of troops disembarked, maps of transportation 
systems and railroad yards, photographs of half- 
finished quays and vast piles of cargo, blue prints 
of the plans of a network of tracks running up to 

39 1 



392 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the doors of hospitals and warehouses, and reports 
from foresters getting out timber, from commanders 
of base sections and regulating stations. 

One thing, however, Tours, Chaumont, and 
Souilly, and every other headquarters had in com- 
mon. That was the call for more guns, rifles, cloth- 
ing, shoes, machine-guns, ammunition, engineering 
tools, balloons, aeroplanes, ambulances, automobiles, 
motor-trucks, and other material, which was passed 
on from Souilly to Chaumont, from Chaumont to 
Tours, and then home. " We are sending them," 
home responded. 

" But hurry! " Tours cried. 

" Clear your ports," home replied. 

" Stop wasting space ! Fully load your ships," 
said Tours. " Equip the troops in the way we ask! 
Send things in the order we ask ! Put them aboard 
with some kind of classification. Don't throw steel 
beams on top of automobile parts and chemical ap- 
paratus ! Pack your sugar and flour in bags that 
don't tear open." 

If there had been a long-distance telephone across 
the Atlantic, steam might have risen to the surface 
from the scorching messages; but the wires we had 
stretched from Paris to Chaumont and to Tours and 
to the coast were used with a prodigality which was 
an evidence of the distrust of our own postal system. 

The barracks that had been turned into offices at 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 393 

Tours had office space equivalent to that of a New 
York " sky-scraper " or of the Army and Navy 
Building in Washington. A private was as distin- 
guished a person in the streets of Tours as in the 
streets of Washington. Nowhere, not even in the 
ordnance department at home, were more leather 
puttees and boots with spurs circulating between 
offices to maintain liaison between the combat units 
and the business end of war than at the general 
offices of that huge corporation at Tours. The 
officers worked hard all day without feeling that 
they had accomplished anything like as much as they 
would have in their own occupation at home. They 
wondered sometimes why so many of them were 
there. Everyone was thinking how to secure mate- 
rial and labor, and everyone had a sense of strug- 
gling with his hands tied behind his back against 
walls of cotton wool. There was a pitiful look in 
their eyes as they stood before their senior officers, 
pleading for a chance to go to the front and fight. 
Was this sitting at your desk in your spurs going 
to war in France? 

" Mother, take down your service flag, your 
son's in the S. O. S.," was the subject of a popular 
army song in France. 

Not far from Tours was Blois — we shall have 
more to say about it — where officers whose seniors 
reported them unsatisfactory were re-classified and 



394 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

re-assigned. It was the channel of passage from 
the front to the S. O. S., and for officers in one 
branch of the S. O. S. who might do better in 
another. The danger of being sent to Blois was a 
shadow over every mind. 

Where the fighters were " homesick," the able- 
bodied workers in the S. O. S. were " front-sick " 
and " heart sick." All their selfish interest centered 
in escaping the misfortune of having to return home 
without having heard a shot fired. If they did not 
do well, there was no chance of their reaching the 
front; if they did well, they became invaluable to 
a senior who refused to let them go. Their rest- 
lessness and their feeling of general helplessness in 
fits of despondency led to a few cases of suicide. 

When Harbord came to Tours, it was not by the 
way of Blois. He was no major-general of engi- 
neers or of the Q. M. C. who, however specially 
capable for his task, had not been in combat service. 
Here was Pershing's favorite adjutant, fresh from 
victories in the field, come back from the limelight 
at the front to help " count the beans and rustle 
freight." This of itself gave him a prestige that 
affected the state of mind of the whole organization. 
He must be a man of action ; and the S. O. S. wanted 
action. He knew his regulars and his reserves, and 
Headquarters at Chaumont, and the needs of the 
army from ship's hold to the fox-holes. The busi- 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 395 

ness men in uniform, with U. S. R. on their collars, 
did not care whether or not their chief was a 
Catholic or a Presbyterian. A regular or a reserve? 
Was he the man? 

He found the S. O. S. working in a series of com- 
partments rather than departments. Though each, 
was most conscientiously striving for coordination, 
different chiefs were in a mood that meant friction. 
Projects whose immediate completion was vital were 
not as far along as those whose completion could 
wait. Many were being constructed on too elabo- 
rate and lavish a scale by chiefs who had won a dis- 
proportionate amount of authority to carry out 
their ideas. They were enjoying the building of a 
plant th»t would last for twenty years, when the 
war might be won in another six months. Harbord 
did what Pershing would have done if the C.-in-C. 
had come to Tours; he was Pershing's man, as he 
had said. He grasped his problem, made his plan, 
and then set his adjutants to driving. 

" The first time I went in to see Harbord," said 
one of them, " I knew that he knew his own mind, 
and that he was going to tell me what to do; and 
that I was going out to do it with the confidence 
that he would back me up. His 4 no ' to my sugges- 
tions was as convincing as his ■ yes ' that we were 
to have team-play — and that he was master." 

His faculty of drawing men together was put in 



396 OUR GREATEST BiVTTLE 

full play in some of the obvious methods of leader- 
ship which had been somewhat neglected in the 
S. O. S., where there had evidently been a policy that 
if you honestly follow the regulations all will come 
out well in the end. All the chiefs gathered at his 
house once a week for luncheon, where they found 
one another to be human. Instead of remaining at 
Tours, he left routine to his Chief of Staff, and 
spent three nights out of four on his railroad car 
in going and coming, with his office on board always 
in touch with Tours, while his inspections kept him 
informed of progress and aroused the enthusiasm 
of subordinates. The feeling passed that you were 
derelict if fate sent you to work in the S. O. S. The 
S. O. S. began to have the fighting spirit of corps 
of the front — that of an ambitious business concern. 
Harbord had not been a week in command before 
the S. O. S. was feeling a new force emanating from 
headquarters. They were calling to the fighters: 
V We're with you. Take more prisoners, so that we 
can set them to work. It means more supplies for 
you." That new commander who now had under 
him more than four hundred thousand men, and 
activities exceeding- those of the largest of our 
trusts, would make every worker feel that he was 
contributing his part, not for his wage envelope, but 
for winning the war which had brought him to 
France. 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 397 

Our cargo was now flowing into every one of the 
ports of France south of Cherbourg, and over- 
flowing into Marseilles in the Mediterranean too. 
The less that had to go to Marseilles, the more 
shipping time would be saved from the longer trip 
through the Strait of Gibraltar. We Americans 
like competition. The different Atlantic ports were 
started on a "race to Berlin" unloading contest; 
the stevedores of the port which won would be the 
first to go home. No Americans in France were 
more homesick than our colored men. When one 
was asked whether he would rather work at Bor- 
deaux than at Saint-Nazaire, he replied: "Is Bor- 
deaux any nearer home?" The "rustling" of 
cargo now became a game in which joyous calls were 
heard in common urging against any shirking which 
might delay the return of the workers to the levees 
and the cotton fields of their own southland. In 
tune with the Herculean mechanical effort of the 
giant American cranes, their Herculean muscular 
effort in its impetuosity was in imminent danger of 
removing the stanchions from the ships as well as 
the cargo. A British skipper who thought that he 
would be two days in unloading, and found that only 
one day was required, returned home to say that he 
was lucky to escape without having his ship's plates 
torn off and started toward the front. When bags 
of sugar were piled so high on one dock that several 



398 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tons went through the floor into the water, it was a 
tragedy to people on sugar rations at home and to 
the sugar-hungry men at the front, but in the fever 
of effort to win the war by supplying two million 
men with their requirements for battle it was only an 
incident of the wicked extravagance of war, which 
led one of the stevedores to say that the sugar must 
count in the record as cargo discharged, while he 
did not think that it would make that old sea that 
had made him seasick so much sweeter that you 
would notice it. 

The impetus which the coming of Harbord gave 
to the S. O. S. implies no criticism of past accom- 
plishment. His business was to " go through," as 
it had been at Belleau Wood and in the counter- 
offensive. An unfinished plant, preparing for an 
offensive in the spring of 19 19, must be made 
equal to one in the fall of 19 18. There had 
never been any lack of energy in the S. O. S. This 
was guaranteed by our national character, under 
the whip of war. All the while we had been making 
progress. The feeling of helplessness on the part 
of the workers had been due to ambition thwarted 
in gaining the full results of the supreme efforts 
which they were eager to exert. There had been no 
cessation of building; no cessation in striving to find 
in Europe every available article which would save 
transport, without reference to the cost — cost being 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 399 

the one thing that never made us hesitate. Every 
man accepted the idea that all the money in the 
world was ours. 

There was already an end to the confusion of the 
early days when the parts of a piece of machinery 
arrived on different ships. Tables of priority for 
each month were sent ahead to Washington, which 
might well think that the A. E. F. considered that 
the War Department had the magical power of 
pulling anything that it required out of a hat. In- 
stead of sending his requisitions for material through 
Chaumont, Harbord now sent them direct to the 
War Department; he was the great administrative 
agent for the chief of G-4 at Chaumont, who 
coordinated combat and supply, holding the balance 
between the demands of the front and the where- 
withal to meet them. There was increasing coordi- 
nation at home, too, under the indomitable authority 
of General March. 

The wedges which our divisions were driving 
down the walls of the Aire and the Meuse rivers 
and against the Kriemhilde Stellung were only a 
part of the giant wedge of the supply system, with 
its bases as broad as the United States, which nar- 
rowed to the breadth of the Atlantic Coast of 
France from Brest to Bordeaux. Most of our 
troops arrived at Brest, where the harbor was deep 
enough for the draught of the mighty German liners 



4 oo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

which had been transformed into transports. Navy 
blue and army khaki swarmed on the docks where 
our sea and land forces met. Our destroyers sped 
out of the harbor to disappear on the horizon, and 
reappear as the protective scurrying guards of the 
transports which they brought safe into port before 
they slipped out to sea again, to see more freighters 
safe through the submarine zone under their agile 
husbanding. 

During the height of that transatlantic excursion 
season of ours the men on board slept in three shifts 
of eight hours each; they had two meals a day. 
Their warm bodies were close-packed, breathing 
into one another's faces, in tiers of low-ceilinged 
rooms, for from seven to ten days, after the healthy 
life of the training camps which had accustomed 
their lungs to fresh air. When the transport passed 
into the harbor mouth, and the submarine danger 
was over, as ants might swarm out of their runways 
to the top of a hill they swarmed on deck, where 
first- and second-class passengers had sauntered and 
promenaded, in solid masses of khaki, who formed 
the most valuable and superior first-class passengers 
America had ever sent to Europe. They had ar- 
rived. They made the harbor echo with calls and 
hurrahs. Theirs had been a passage which money 
could not buy or would want to buy for more than 
one experience ; a passage not for pay or adventure, 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 4 or 

whose glamour was a sight of the sea and of 
France and of all they had read about the war. 
They were man-power, man-power by its thousands 
and millions, formed in a common mold no less 
than egg-grenades, their clothes cut according to the 
same pattern no less than their gas masks, the man- 
power which we had to give if we did lack artillery 
and aeroplanes, automata who were sentient parts of 
a machine responding to the mechanism of orders 
rather than of levers. Equipped, disciplined, 
trained, hardened, the preparatory processes of the 
training camps sent them to us for the final processes 
in France. 

Mighty lighters hurried alongside the transport, 
whose time must not be wasted while the hundreds 
of thousands of other passengers waited three thou- 
sand miles away. Swiftly, more swiftly than any 
but human cargo could be unloaded, they were dis- 
embarked, the decks and the hold becoming strangely 
empty with the resounding footsteps of the officers 
and crew in place of the hum of conversation and 
the atmosphere of human bodies crowded together. 

Their confinement normally and charitably re- 
quired that stiffened bodies and minds and suffocated 
lungs should have a period of relaxation and exer- 
cise. This indeed was a part of the original plans; 
but now when original plans had gone by the board 
in feeding in men to make the present the decisive 



402 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

offensive, though horses must be given rest, it was 
found that men who had been through a regime to 
toughen their human adaptability for what four- 
legged animals could not endure, could do without 
such consideration when they were needed as the 
minute men of the Meuse-Argonne battle. Shipped 
as freight from camp to pier, from pier on to trans- 
port, and then from Brest across France, which they 
saw only through the doors of box cars where they 
were packed as close as on board the transports, the 
one idea at every point was to hurry them along until 
they were delivered f. o. b. at the front. There, 
after coming from comfortable barracks, after the 
devitalizing closeness of transport and train, in a 
merciless climatic change, they could remain in the 
fox-holes in the chill penetrating mists and rains as 
they were still being hurried against the enemy, until 
death or wounds or " flu " or pneumonia or the 
dizziness of fatigue reported them as " expended." 
Caring for the passage of this human stream from 
the ports to the front was the first duty of the 
S. O. S. The next was to follow it up with supplies. 
Wherever men were they must be fed. La Pallice 
and La Rochelle were also being used; but the main 
Atlantic cargo ports were Saint-Nazaire and Bor- 
deaux. Ships moved with a processional regularity 
to their places alongside the docks we had built. 
Our warehouses stretched out over the sandy reaches 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 403 

where an occasional vine appeared between spur 
tracks on the site of the vineyards for which we were 
paying, and which hardly brought as much wealth to 
Bordeaux as the money we were spending. Broken 
bags of flour, and broken crates of canned goods, 
were piled in separate warehouses ; as they could not 
stand the journey to the front, they were used to 
feed the legions of the S. O. S. For there was an 
army larger than Grant had in the Appomattox cam- 
paign to be supplied between the ports and the 
front. Fields were filled with the parts of automo- 
biles and trucks. Assembled, they started in long 
convoys across France to Saint-Mihiel or the Ar- 
gonne, their drivers having a tour of the chateau 
country before passing over the Cote d'Or of Bur- 
gundy. All the parts of the railroad locomotives 
and cars arriving were assembled in the vast shops 
which we had built and fitted out with machinery 
according to the latest American models. 

We were supposed to have, but never had, ninety 
days' routine supplies in France for all our forces 
in France. Of these forty-five days were to be in 
the warehouses at the base ports. Sometimes trains 
were loaded at the ports and run straight through to 
the front. Normally, there were three changes in 
transit. At our service were all the arterial rail- 
roads of central France, and all the locomotives and 
cars that the French could spare, and all the broken- 



40 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

down French rolling stock which our mechanics could 
repair. Possibly no denial can ever overtake the 
report that we built a railroad clear across France; 
but we did nothing of the kind, and contemplated 
nothing of the kind. We built spur tracks and sid- 
ings and cut-offs; if all the track we laid, figured a 
statistician in G-4 at Chaumont, had been in line, it 
would have reached from Saint-Nazaire across 
France and Germany to the Russian frontier. 

All our building construction, if it had been con- 
centrated in one standard barrack building, would 
extend from Saint-Nazaire as far as the Elbe river 
in Germany. We erected and put in operation 
18,543 American railroad cars, and 1,496 American 
locomotives. Besides producing enough firewood to 
form an unbroken wall around three sides of France, 
one meter high and one meter broad, we sawed 
189,564,000 feet of lumber, 2,728,000 standard 
gauge ties, 923,560 narrow gauge ties, and 1,739,000 
poles and pit props. If all the motor vehicles we 
brought to France were put end to end, they would 
form a convoy two hundred and ninety miles in 
length. On the day that the armistice was signed 
we were operating 1,400 miles of light railway, of 
which 1,090 miles had been captured from the 
Germans. They handled 860,652 tons of material. 

These figures, put together in a paragraph in pass- 
ing, give an idea of the magnitude of the business 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 405 

which the army of the S. O. S. was conducting. It 
was an army which knew no excitement in war except 
work. The problem of sea transport which faced 
our ports at home was no more trying than the prob- 
lem of railroad transport from our ports in France ; 
liaison between combat units in action no more try- 
ing than the liaison between our American railroad 
men with their American training and the French 
railroad system. We were used to long distances 
and long hauls; the French, in a country no larger 
than some of our states, were used to short distances 
and short hauls. Impatient at first with their meth- 
ods, we saw how they had come to be applied in 
France. Amazed at first at ours, the French came 
to appreciate how well our long heavy trains suited 
the wholesale business of war. The French seemed 
unsystematic, yet their worn locomotives and rickety 
cars managed to carry on an enormous traffic. 
When we applied our home tracer system for the 
first time on the railroads of France, the central 
offices might know the location of every car under 
their authority. 

Our railroad men, under Brigadier-General 
W. W. Atterbury, our railroad general, used to 
having at home all the supplies they needed, made 
victory possible by the way in which they patched 
and contrived in their energy and resource to meet 
the demands of the months of September and Oc- 



4 o6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

tober, which were far beyond their calculations. 
They share the honors due to our pioneer railroad 
builders in the early days of the west, while they 
exemplified the type of men who operate our great 
systems of today, whether the engineer, the fireman 
or shop mechanic, the veteran superintendent, or the 
young fellow just out of a technical school. I won- 
der no less how they were able, with the rolling 
stock at their command, to forward all the tonnage 
we required at the front, than I wonder how we were 
able to take some of the positions of the whale-back. 

In his office at Tours, surrounded by his adjutants, 
who, though in khaki, were railroad men in every 
word and thought, and in the discipline which our 
fiome systems have established in webbing our coun- 
try, Brigadier-General Atterbury had a command 
which in numbers belonged to a major-general. His 
giiscipline was that of a leadership which won 
loyalty. In all his perplexing situations, when he 
was striving for authority and material for an under- 
taking so strictly technical, he never passed on any 
animus to a subordinate. It is something for an 
officer to return from France with the respect which 
he had from his subordinates. 

The train that started on the steel trail across 
France, leaving behind the hectic labor and the piles 
of cargo and the warehouses built and building, 
when it passed out of the region of the base sections 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 407 

came to the intermediate zone. In the regular rou- 
tine it lost its entity when it ascended the " hump " 
which we had built at Gievres, — that American 
hump, singularly characteristic of our system of 
labor-saving organization. Every car was loaded 
with material belonging to some branch of the 
army. One by one they were " dropped " down the 
incline, each being switched to a track, as its down- 
grade momentum, subject to the brakes, sent it — i 
with the facility of letters tossed into mail bags by 
a railway mail clerk — where its contents belonged, 
whether to the door of an engineer, an ordnance, a 
signal corps, a medical corps, or a Y. M. C. A. of 
Red Cross warehouse, while the meat trains or 
others with perishable cargo went to our vast cold- 
storage plant. From the " hump " you looked out 
over a city of warehouses, of barracks, and other 
structures, with its guardhouse, its clubs, its motion- 
picture theaters, its military policemen, under a 
colonel who was mayor, common council, and king 
— all having been built in the open fields as a way 
station from the New York docks to the front. 

Here at Gievres other trains were made up to 
continue the journey forward in answer to the daily 
requisitions of the regulating stations upon the inter- 
mediate reserves. War being a one-way business, 
all expenditure and no income, all loaded cars were 
going one way except those bringingjJumber and ties 



4 o8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

that we were cutting from the forests for construc- 
tion, salvage from the battlefield, broken trucks, and 
vehicles — and the hospital trains. Here prevision 
must be most sure. Man was the most valuable 
piece of machinery; his repair the most important of 
all repairs. We had enormous hospitals in the 
intermediate zone as well as at the base ports; and 
indeed all over central and southern France. The 
medical corps used great hotels and other buildings 
to care for the hosts of broken, gassed, exhausted, 
sick men from the Meuse-Argonne battle ; but when 
we had to build we ran out spur tracks — deep was 
our faith in spur tracks — into open fields upon 
which rose cities of standardized unit hospital build- 
ings, all of a color, all of a pattern, and also operat- 
ing rooms and Y. M. C. A. clubs and theaters, under 
the autocracy of some regular surgeon who looked 
up from his desk at the chart on the wall showing 
the number of his patients and the number of vacant 
beds. The hospital trains ran up on the spur tracks, 
and hobbling wounded descended, and wounded who 
could not hobble were carried on stretchers to their 
beds — each a card-indexed automaton, no less than 
when he entered the training camp, as he would re- 
main until he was demobilized or buried in France. 
So the trains of munitions passed the trains laden 
with the products of war, the knowledge of whose 
sacrifice is the only value of war. Right and left 



THE S. O. S. DRIVES A WEDGE 409 

through the intermediate zone, from Orleans to the 
Mediterranean, were more repair shops, remount 
depots, training camps for aviators, tank crews, 
machine-gunners and carrier pigeons, each worker 
striving for the same purpose that shoveled the coal 
into the locomotive firebox or slipped a shell into a 
gun or a cartridge into a rifle. At Is-sur-Tille, near 
Dijon, was another " hump," which looked down on 
what seemed a training camp in its streets of mud: 
for there was mud in the S. O. S. as well as at the 
front — mud kept soft by the damp atmosphere 
when autumn rain was not falling, and deep by the 
trampling of many feet. Here, as at Gievres, the 
train sent its cars on their way to the warehouses 
to which their contents belonged; here you felt at 
first hand the breath of the« front in all its hot and 
pressing demands; here was the largest bakery, with 
cement floors and all up-to-date apparatus, directed 
by the head of one of our large bakeries at home, 
rolling out the round loaves with the ease of peas 
shelled from a pod. All night long, as at Gievres 
and at the base ports, the switch engines coughed 
forth their growls as they shunted cars, and the 
laborers worked at loading and unloading. The 
officer in charge in his little office was directing as 
insistent an excursion business as ever fell to the lot 
of man. His nightmare, and the nightmare of all 
the regulating officers of the S. O. S., was moving 



4 io OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

cars. Every hour a car was needlessly idle was 
waste. This called for labor, and more labor — for 
more warehouse space, for more locomotives, for 
more sidings; but as they were not forthcoming, 
why, man and machine must be made to do more 
work. The excess strain on either was not consid- 
ered. The pressure was the same as that for the 
relief of a city stricken by fire or earthquake. 

Beyond Is-sur-Tille at Saint-Dizier was another, 
a supplementary, regulating station for the Meuse- 
Argonne battle, which during the battle fed, apart 
from the troops in the Saint-Mihiel and other sec- 
tors, 645,000 men and 115,000 animals. Regulat- 
ing stations did the detail, while Gievres and the 
base ports did the wholesale. They saw that each 
division received its daily rations of food and am- 
munition. Each division had its " cut in " of cars, 
with all its daily supplies, which was made up a day 
in advance and sent to the divisional railhead. 
Knowing the needs of the divisions, a regulating sta- 
tion sent its requisition back to the big warehouse 
centers, while it always tried to keep on hand a small 
amount of all articles likely to be needed in haste. 
When we were swinging our divisions around for the 
Chateau-Thierry emergency, one division had seven 
railheads in eight days; its trains were on hand on 
each occasion. They must be; otherwise the divi- 
sions went hungry. Ail other demands must yield 



THE S.O.S. DRIVES A WEDGE 4 ri 

to the routine which brings the morning milk and 
the grocer's boy to the kitchen door. 

At the railhead you felt not only the breath of 
battle but that throbbing suspense and intensity of 
purpose which is associated with men in action. 
Here came the empty trucks and wagons from the 
front, and the ambulances traveling in their convoys 
on the crowded roads up to the zone of fire, while 
men worked in darkness. Here the wedge from 
home was narrowing under the hammer strokes, 
until you could feel it splitting the oak — the hammer 
strokes of the hundred millions, their energy, their 
prayers and thoughts. 

Those empty trucks seemed ever hungry, open 
mouths, the mute expression of the call for more, 
and still more, of everything with which to keep 
up the driving — more replacements as well as 
material. 

When the front wanted anything, it was wanted 
immediately. Improvise it, purloin it, beg for it, 
but send it, was the command that admitted of no 
refusal. If this officer could not get it, put another 
in his place who could. Officers when they lay down 
for a few hours' sleep had their telephones at their 
elbow, ready as firemen to answer the call. Men 
worked until the doctors ordered them to the hos- 
pital — that they must do. They could do no more. 
The S. O. S. could not send guns or tanks when it 



412 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had none from home ; but American resourcefulness 
surpassed its own dreams of probabilities. Harbord 
could well say to Pershing: "I've straightened out 
things in the S. O. S." 



XXIV 

REGULARS AND RESERVES 

Isolation of West Pointers — College graduates not dissociated 
from the community — The monastic ideal of the founder of 
West Point — And the caste ideal — The officer a cleat on the 
escalator of promotion — Out of contact with America — Five 
years to make a soldier — A clan tradition — A blank check to 
the regulars. 

Before our entry into the war our busy people 
had occasional reminders that we had a United 
States Military Academy for training army officers. 
Its gray walls on the bluffs at West Point were one 
of the sights of the Hudson valley to passengers on 
river steamers. There was an annual football game 
between the West Point and Annapolis cadets. As 
every schoolboy knew, both teams were better than 
those of the small eastern colleges, but not so good 
as those of the large eastern colleges. The cadets 
were in the inaugural parade. Their marching 
thrilled observers with an excellence which, however, 
is always expected from professionals, whether ball- 
players, billiardists, actors, pugilists, circus per- 
formers, opera singers, or poets. It was the cadets' 
business to march well. Of course they were supe- 
rior to amateurs in their own line. Investigations 

413 



4 i4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of " hazing " had also at one time attracted wide 
attention to the Academy. Some of us were horrified, 
and others of us amused — still others disinterested 
as long as they did not have to take the dose them- 
selves — at reports of first-class men having to swal- 
low large draughts of tabasco sauce in order to 
toughen their stomachs for the horrors of war. 

A community which sent only an occasional boy 
to West Point sent many boys to civil colleges. I 
was one of the boys who went to a civil college, and 
knew how we felt in our time. We returned at the 
end of our freshman year with the attitude of " How 
little they know! " as we looked around our native 
town. During our college career we spent our holi- 
days in home surroundings, which formed a break 
in college influences. At the end of our senior year 
we had the " rah! rah! " spirit of class, alma mater, 
and college fraternity, and a feeling that the men 
who went to the principal collegiate football rival 
were of a low caste. We were graduated full of 
theories and wisdom, and set out to earn a living 
and incidentally to demonstrate how little " they " 
really knew. By the time we were able to earn a 
living we concluded that " they " had known more 
than we thought. 

In fact, we ourselves now belonged to the 
" theys '• struggling in the great competition of pro- 
fessional and industrial life. We met men who had 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 415 

not been to college, who were the betters of college 
men. Having left college sworn to keep the 
fraternity first in our hearts and to write frequently 
to our friends, other interests and other acquaint- 
ances took our time. Meeting men from the deadly 
football rival, we found that they were the same 
kind of men as ourselves. We went to the annual 
football game and to class reunions where the old 
spirit revived transiently, and old memories were 
recalled as we met our old mates ; but we found that 
we had not as much in common with them, beyond 
memories, as we had had in our youth. They 
had gone into different occupations, developed differ- 
ent tastes, and enjoyed varying measures of success. 
Some had become rich and famous; some had gone 
into politics; some had achieved respectable citizen- 
ship and some had failed. Jones at the head of the 
class had not done well; Smith at the foot had be- 
come a power in the world. Robinson, who had 
not been a remarkable scholar in his youth, was now 
a great professor. Brown, who had been a most 
serious student, was interested only in his golf score ; 
Higgins, who had barely escaped expulsion for 
frivolity, was a serious judge. Larkin, who had been 
pointed out as a born leader of men at twenty-one, 
was a follower of meager influence. All this proved 
that college was only a curriculum in studies and 
basic character-building, while development came in 



4 i 6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

after life from inherent vitality, persistence, latent 
talent, health, environment, and innumerable in- 
fluences. 

The occasional West Pointer who returned home 
at the end of his second year with squared shoulders 
and chin drawn in had become far more dissociated 
from his surroundings than the freshman of a civil 
college. He too was thinking, " How little they 
know!" After his graduation, except for a rare 
visit to his parents, he had ceased to be a part of 
the home community. He was here and there at 
army posts, and serving in the Philippines. It was 
not unlikely that he had been a poor boy. I have 
known instances where boys had to borrow the 
money to travel to West Point. Many of the ap- 
pointees had no particular call to the profession of 
arms; but they knew and their parents knew that 
from the day he entered the academy a cadet would 
not require a cent from home or have to " work his 
way," or win a scholarship. The nation took him 
under its wing. In order to receive an appointment 
it was well to know the local Congressman or a Sen- 
ator, even in these days of competitive examinations. 

The appointment of poor boys to be officers had 
the appeal of democracy. It was a system devised 
in the days following the Revolution, when in Eng- 
land commissions in the red-coats were bought and 
sold, and only the sons of the gentry became officers. 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 417 

West Point, now well over a hundred years old, 
was at first an engineering school, but the real 
founder of the academy of to-day was Sylvanus 
Thayer, who had Prussian ideas of the same kind 
as von Steuben, drillmaster of the Revolutionary 
armies. He was of the old school of martinets, who 
proposed to establish in the midst of this pioneering, 
lawless, new country an institution where pupils 
could be caught young and so disciplined and formed 
that they would be worthy of the strictest European 
military tradition. In return for this privilege, the 
Congressman was to have the power of appoint- 
ment. Congress accepted the idea. It did not inter- 
fere with the militia organizations, or any group of 
amateurs, or the conviction that any man in his shirt- 
sleeves and with a squirrel rifle was the equal of any 
European regular. At the same time it trained 
some really professional officers, who might become 
generals in time of war. Moreover, it was demo- 
cratic; this was the compelling argument. America 
was opportunity; a poor boy might become a gen- 
eral; the Congressman might select the poor boy 
who was to be a general. 

The founder was a wise man and a stern one. He 
set the tradition which endured; he put the cadets 
into the uniform which we see in the cuts of Welling- 
ton's veterans who fought at Waterloo, and which 
they were to wear for a hundred years. He put a 



4 i 8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

stigma upon being " dropped " from the Academy, 
which was a counter to family and political influence 
for a softer course. Doubtless he foresaw that 
when the graduates were through with these hard 
four years, they would be a unit for its continuance, 
particularly as they had not to go through it again. 
He had no illusions about democracy; he knew that 
democracy was the curse of military discipline. He 
believed in an officer caste; there could not be a 
good army without caste. If he could not have 
students from families belonging to the officer caste 
according to European traditions, he would make 
them gentlemen. They would be taught to dance, 
and initiated into a code of officer ethics and eti- 
quette. In later times the Point had its polo team, 
a luxury which only rich youth could afford. 

This did not imply any relaxation of that severe 
regime in which theoretically only the fittest were to 
survive. The cadets might not smoke cigarettes or 
drink; they might not go skylarking to neighboring 
towns. Their every hour of drill, study, and recrea- 
tion was counted. Far from the freedom of the 
elective course, every mind and body was filled into 
a mold a century old. Three-fourths of the study 
was scholastic; only a fourth, outside the drill, could 
be classed as strictly military: for the cadets were 
supposed to receive the equivalent of a collegiate 
education at the same time that they were being 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 419 

trained to be officers. With few exceptions their 
instructors were former graduates, called in from 
service with the army. Some of these might be 
rusty, compared to the experts of civil colleges, who 
gave their lives to specializing in one branch ; but 
civilian teachers could not supply military discipline 
and atmosphere. 

The boy who went to West Point was an average 
boy. At an impressionable age he entered a world 
as isolated and self-centered as that of a monastery. 
The effects of college and fraternity spirit were 
many times intensified. He had almost no oppor- 
tunities of renewing the associations of civil life; 
all was of the army, for the army, and by the army. 
Though he served in the ranks as a cadet, he never 
served in the ranks as a soldier. His " How little 
they know ! " was not to suffer the shock of com- 
petitive strife with the millions of other boys whom 
he was to lead as a general. His quality of leader- 
ship had been tested only in marks on drill and 
scholarship. 

When he was graduated, he became an officer, 
his position assured for life. The fellows of his 
school days who went into professions had to have 
their way paid, or to work their way, through col- 
lege and professional school, and then slowly build 
up a practice. All this the West Pointer had free, 
as the gift of his country, in the name of democracy. 



4 2o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

His income would be more than equal to that of the 
average graduate of our leading law and medical 
schools, with the certainty of sufficient pay to care 
for his old age when he was retired. Once an officer, 
he could lean back on his oars if he chose, — the 
hardest work of his career having been finished when 
other boys are beginning theirs. He became a cleat 
on the slow-moving escalator of promotion, waiting 
on the death and retirement of seniors or the ex- 
pansion of the army. There were other cleats than 
those with the West Point marking, those of officers 
who had worked their way up from the ranks, and 
a larger class which had come in through examina- 
tion; but the West Point spirit was dominant. The 
West Pointer was a West Pointer; his tradition the 
tradition of the army. 

Superb of health, and hardened of physique, the 
graduate, I should add, need not continue the West 
Point regime after his graduation. He might neg- 
lect exercise to the point that led President Roose- 
velt to issue his order compelling tests of physical 
endurance, which led to such an uproar in army 
circles. Roosevelt proceeded on the sound prin- 
ciple that capacity for enormous and sudden physical 
strain is a prime requisite — as the Great War so 
abundantly proved — for leading infantry on marches 
and in battle, and for sleeping on the ground. 

Occasionally a West Pointer may have had some 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 421 

of his illusions about " they " amended by his 
colonel; but anything like a full revelation was out 
of the question. The young lieutenant, when he 
went to an army post at home or in the Philippines, 
found himself in the same isolated world of army 
thought and associations. The troops he com- 
manded hardly put him in touch with the average 
of citizens. They were men who, in a country 
which did not feel the call to military service, en- 
listed for $17.50 a month and the security of army 
life, oftener than for adventure or ambition. Be- 
tween them and their officers there was as broad a 
gulf as between any officer class in Europe and their 
soldiers. All standards were set on the time required 
to drill these recruits and form them in the regular 
army mould. 

When officers met, ten or twenty years after grad- 
uation or receiving their commissions, they found 
none of the changes of fortune which alumni of 
civil colleges found. Everyone was in the same 
relative rank as when he became a second lieu- 
tenant. The army opposed promotion by selection, 
as that meant " political " influence and favoritism. 
Promotion by selection was against the law, except 
that the President might, if he chose, make a second 
lieutenant a brigadier or major-general with the 
consent of the Senate. The promotion of Wood, 
Bell, Funston, and Pershing to be brigadiers over 



422 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the heads of many seniors led to no end of ill- 
feeling in the army, which made these ambitious 
and able officers the victims of an unpopularity 
which only time and the retirement of older officers 
could overcome. 

They had all distinguished themselves in the 
Spanish War, which had awakened us to a realiza- 
tion that though we had excellent regiments, which 
exhibited all the sturdy and dependable qualities of 
the regulars, we had no army organization. Under 
Secretary Root we developed the staff school and 
the school of the line at Leavenworth, and the War 
College at Washington, as a series of schools where 
ambitious officers could study tactics, specialize in 
different branches, form paper armies, and direct 
them in the field. The Staff College applied West 
Point industry. Its students worked long hours in 
the enthusiasm of mastering their profession. It 
was necessarily scholastic. I remember seeing, soon 
after the Russo-Japanese War, a combat maneuver 
of a few companies in the fields at Leavenworth. It 
was carried out in a manner that would have morti- 
fied a young reserve officer in France. Some of 
the soldiers participating had had two and three 
years' service. In wonted freedom of speech I 
suggested that with three months' training com- 
panies of college men, farm-hands, elevator boys, 
brakemen, firemen, clerks, and managers, drawn 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 423 

from civil life, could be taught to perform this 
maneuver better than we had just seen it performed. 
There was a chorus of protest, particularly from 
the older officers, who were saying that the trouble 
was that these men had not had enough drill: it 
took five years to make a soldier. Not all the 
younger officers joined in this view. One had the 
courage to express his opinion: " You're right — pro- 
vided those citizens you mention put their hearts and 
intelligence into the job. Give them six months, with 
enough experts to train them, and plenty of war 
material to back them; shoot over them a few times 
— and I'd ask nothing better than to lead them." 
He was to live to see his heresy become orthodoxy; 
to see West Point receiving lessons in democracy 
from American soldiery. 

Upon our entry into the war, our officers might 
have been divided into three classes: (A), including 
about ten per cent of the whole, officers who were 
the best of the Leavenworth graduates : officers who 
had shown administrative ability and natural leader- 
ship; officers who were in touch with the world, 
alert, vital, with strong constitutions, and the 
capacity of meeting situations. These men would 
have done well in any occupation in civil life. (B), 
average officers, devoted to their duty, consistently 
efficient. These represented about forty per cent. 
They would have been moderately successful in civil 



4 2 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

life. (C), the remaining fifty per cent, of varying 
degrees of capacity. They included the officers who 
kept step and escaped courts, those without ambi- 
tion, those who had not grown since they received 
their commissions, the fussy sticklers for etiquette 
without power of initiative, those who avoided any 
extra work, those who were never meant to lead 
men in battle. This class, with few exceptions, 
would not have been successful in civil life ; not good 
lawyers or doctors, railroad men or mechanics. They 
would never have earned the pay they received any- 
where but in the army. 

Taken as a whole, the average was about the 
same as in any group of men; it was high, indeed, 
considering the absence of incentive and of competi- 
tion. Then there were the unknown quantities in 
every class: the officers whose latent powers, hith- 
erto undetected, came into play under the call of 
emergency; and the officers who disappointed ex- 
pectations formed in peace when they were put to 
the test of war. 

All of them were fellows in the life of the post, 
where the feminine element had its influence. Almost 
without exception they lived modestly on their pay. 
Everyone knew the other's income. The rank of 
wives was that of their husbands. The officer com- 
manding was the head of the family. All the jeal- 
ousies of any isolated community were in play. 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 425 

There was bound to be intrigue for good assign- 
ments, not only in Washington and favorite posts 
at home, but in the Philippines; but there was no 
such thing as corruption. The army was straight; 
its code of honor was unimpeachable, except in the 
influences for good assignments. There were hops 
and dinners, and visiting back and forth. Inner 
feelings might be strong, but they must be kept under 
the mantle of formal politeness; for you did not 
choose your companions. They were chosen by army 
Orders. Everything was official, and what was not 
was rank. 

Talk at the bachelor messes and at all gatherings 
was about " shop " : which left the outsider as de- 
tached as a railroad man attending a convention 
of chemists. The lack of common themes was one 
reason for absence of contact with the " they " of 
the outside world. The army register was the most 
read of books. It showed where all your friends 
were serving, and also you could reckon when you 
would receive your promotion, and when perhaps 
you might have a separate command, with husband 
and wife outranking all present and having to follow 
the views of no senior in matters of routine. 
Strong and biting criticisms were exchanged of fellow 
officers, whose nicknames of cadet days remained, — 
whether " Rusty," or " Poppy/ 1 " Wooden-headed 
Charlie," "Slow Bill," "Pincushion Pete," or 



426 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

" Noisy Tom." Smith had gone to seed. How 
Jones had ever been able to graduate from the Point 
was past understanding. Robinson managed more 
good appointments with less ability than any man in 
the service. All belonged to the army; in the pres- 
ence of the outside world there could be no fault in 
the army. Officers stood together; they stood up for 
their men, no matter how mercilessly they " bawled 
them out " at drill. In the background at drill and 
in the barracks were the sergeants and corporals, 
the " non-coms," who shaped the " rookies " into 
soldiers, and who carried on all the routine drills. 
Old soldiers, they had fallen into the habit of army 
life. Their position in our democratic country 
lacked the importance that it enjoyed in European 
armies. In the offices were the field clerks, who ran 
the typewriters and carried on office routine. 

Among the officers the college spirit backing the 
football team for victory, and that of the secret 
society and of the trade -union, were inevitably, as in 
all officers' corps, united in the common fealty of 
self-protection. The army was always fighting for 
its rights against an unappreciative nation. Secretly 
it was always against each administration. Roose- 
velt was almost hated at one time. Later he was ad- 
mired. Congress was regarded as a natural enemy 
which cut down appropriations. Civilian secretaries 
of war, who came into office without the slightest 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 427 

knowledge of the character of the military service, 
fell into the hands of a clique of officers close to the 
throne. Unless you had a friend among them, you 
might not count on good assignments, said the pessi- 
mistic of class C. 

The feeling that the army was underpaid was as 
common as that it was unappreciated. Officers, 
thinking only of the men in civil life who succeeded, 
complained that they could not associate with the 
outside world because they had not the money to 
keep up their social end. The dream of every 
officer was of a great conscript army, like the 
French or German. This meant promotion, of 
course, and that the army would count for some- 
thing in the country, though the thought was not 
consciously selfish on the part of the best men. It 
was professional and natural human ambition, based 
on the conviction of the necessity of military train- 
ing for every citizen. Without it an officer could 
not be a good soldier. It was a better spirit than 
that of the time-servers of class C, who were inter- 
ested in promotion alone, and in passing the time. 

The prospect of Japan taking the Pacific Coast 
was the main item of propaganda before the Great 
War began. Then Germany, or the victor in the 
war, was seen devastating our coasts, his great guns 
toppling our cities in ruins, and his infantry sweeping 
across country, perpetrating the horrors of Belgium. 



428 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Any officer who knew his profession in the large, 
knew — despite the figures assembled for its proof — 
that the transport of forces for a successful invasion 
was out of the question ; but such methods of making 
the flesh creep alone could awaken an indifferent 
public to the necessity of an adequate army and the 
value of military drill to our heterogeneous popula- 
tion. The regulars saw us depending against trained 
hosts upon citizens in shirt-sleeves and the undisci- 
plined National Guard. " They " of the outside 
world were concerned only with their own prosperity 
— undisciplined, utterly without the military sense or 
spirit. War was a biological necessity. There had 
always been war, and there always would be war. 
One day we would find ourselves at war. The 
nation would call for soldiers, and the little band 
of regulars would go forth to sacrifice. Meanwhile, 
in the midst of ignorance, they would keep the altar 
fires burning, and remain true to the traditions of 
their profession. 

Then a miracle happened. The dream of the reg- 
ulars came true. There were to be no political gen- 
erals : none were to be rewarded with commissions 
for raising regiments, as in the Civil War. We 
were to have the draft; all direction was to be left 
to the professional. The nation signed a check 
upon all our resources, human and material, to be 
filled out by them. Our people offered all they had 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 429 

in order to save civilization. Their thought was 
the interest of their souls, their country, humanity, 
and their future happiness and prosperity. 

To the army officers war was their occupation: 
a viewpoint entirely different. Glorious opportunity 
had burst the door of their isolation wide open, 
beckoning them to power. It was the same to them 
as if overnight the stocks in a land company had 
jumped a thousand per cent owing to the discovery 
of oil on its property. Majors and captains of classes 
B and C were to be colonels of regiments of three 
thousand men, more than colonels, and many briga- 
diers, had ever commanded. All the officers of class 
A might now carry out their theories in practice : 
they might aim for the command, not of paper, but 
of real armies in battle. Only a few had been in 
touch with the psychology of the country. The 
country was swarming in upon them. Was it sur- 
prising that some of class C and class B and even 
of class A felt, at the prospect of enlightening the 
ignorance of the manhood of all the United States, 
a constriction of cap-bands which had formerly been 
large enough? 

For recruit officers of this enormous new army we 
turned to our colleges and technical schools. This 
was an educational test, but the only one that could 
be hurriedly applied. The average of the candi- 
dates for the officers' training camps must be as 



430 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

naturally capable as the average of army officers. 
They must possess a class A, drawn from men al- 
ready tested in civil life, which would be equal in 
brain power to class A on the army list; and it must 
be relatively larger, considering how few army offi- 
cers there were and how numerous were the edu- 
cated, intelligent, and ambitious youth of our coun- 
try. Among those who were only privates in the 
swarms of volunteers who enlisted immediately upon 
our entry into the war were privates to whom nature 
had given a natural capacity for leadership which 
no curriculum of a military school or civil college 
could supply; who were to take the leadership of 
companies out of the hands of men who had an " A 
plus " in calculus, surveying, and Latin. After the 
volunteers, the draft men began arriving at the train- 
ing camps in excursion parties. 

" When I saw them piling off the train," said 
one regular officer, " the undisciplined sons of an 
undisciplined people, I wondered what they would 
do to us. They had not been in camp a day before 
I knew that they were going to play the game." It 
had never occurred to him, his horizon restricted 
from his juvenile days at the Academy, that there 
was discipline in the running of our railroads, our 
industries, our labor unions, our societies, our lodges, 
and in all the team-play of our sports ; that we were 
all used to obeying orders in the process of earning 



REGULARS AND RESERVES 431 

a living or winning a baseball game. Those boys 
among the volunteers and in the draft were of the 
same kind as the boys who went to the Point to 
become members of the officer class. There had 
been no such military marvel in all history as the 
willingness of our people to yield authority which 
the British had granted only after painful stages of 
inveterate resistance. It was all inexpressibly mag- 
nificent; a better proof of strength and character 
than any form of routine military preparedness. 
Given such a spirit — a spirit the stronger for the 
dislike of military forms and the aversion to war — 
and we could no more fail of victory in the end than 
you can exterminate the Jewish race. Without that 
spirit nations decay and fail, for war does not form 
character: war only expresses the character formed 
in peace. 

Every volunteer and draft private, every would- 
be officer, realized his ignorance, as a neophyte 
about to be initiated into professional mystery. He 
had the willingness to conform, the eagerness to 
learn, of the neophyte. No teachers were ever safer 
from scepticism on the part of their pupils. The 
West Point discipline was applied. It taught the 
drillmaster's fundamentals of forming good physique 
and habits of strict routine. For this, great credit 
is due. This host of recruits, American in intelli- 
gence and adaptability, " playing the game," never 



432 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

able to answer back, rigid at salute, imbibing the 
instruction of class A or enduring the outbursts of 
temper in good army " bawling out " language from 
class C, formed a silent body of criticism which be- 
came increasingly discriminate with growth of 
knowledge. The instructors did not forget that the 
course at West Point was four years, though they 
did forget that three-fourths of the curriculum con- 
sisted of elementals learned at a civil school. They 
did forget their association with the " rookies " who 
became privates of regulars in time of peace. Hold- 
ing fast to these criteria, they overlooked how fast 
the average youth of America could learn when he 
put his heart and mind into intensive study and drill. 



XXV 

LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 

Developing "staff work" in France — The younger men from 
Leavenworth schools in the saddle — The inner ring of the 
expert — Building the " best staff " at Langres — The obsession 
of promotion. 

So it happened that the little band of regulars did 
not go out to sacrifice in a body. They were scat- 
tered through the training camps as instructors, and 
they directed the expansion of our army organiza- 
tion. The officers of our General Staff in Wash- 
ington had followed the strategy of the war on the 
maps, and studied its larger tactical problems in the 
light of such reports as were received. Their own 
precepts and training led them to admire the German 
rather than the French army system; a majority, 
thinking at first that Germany would win, were ac- 
cordingly impressed with the seriousness of our 
undertaking when we entered the war. They hardly 
realized that the Canadians and Australians, who 
were people of something the same character as our- 
selves, had developed from raw recruits divisions 
and corps which were without superiors. We had 
formed no plan for operating an army in Europe. 

433 



434 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

We seemed to be unfamiliar with the static details 
of trench warfare, with the clothing and equipment 
required; otherwise all this information would not 
have had to be sent back by the officers of our 
pioneer force in France three months after our entry 
into the war. 

The training camps being established, and muni- 
tion plants under way at home, we must prepare to 
command our forces when they were ready to take 
the field. " Staff work " was supposed the most 
expert of all the branches. In my first book I have 
already gone into the organization of our staff in 
France, formed on the plan of European staffs. 
What I have to add now comes in the light of later 
events, after the staff had been tried in battle, and 
in the light of the days of peace, when discrimina- 
tion will not be misunderstood. In the early days 
in France a progressive officer said to me : " We 
must not go too fast in elimination of the unfit and 
promotion of the fit. It will upset the equilibrium. 
We must wait on evolution." It was General 
Pershing who had to maintain the equilibrium. He 
was a regular; and regulars regarded him as their 
general. He had to depend upon the men who had 
rank; and upon trained soldiers who knew the army 
system, in order to start his machine. One day, 
someone remarked to him, " But this officer is in a 
rut, and a winding rut, that does not permit him to 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 435 

see ahead, let alone over the walls." The General 
replied: " But he's one of my broad-minded ones. 
What do you think I do with my narrow-minded 
ones? " 

Possibly the tests, ever so swift in war, were 
swifter in France than at home. It was soon evident 
that some regular officers could rise to their tasks, 
and that some could not. Some of them had fallen 
into habits that did not permit long concentration of 
mind. They had not the physical vitality to endure 
long hours of labor. They were obsessed by small 
details, when they were suddenly given charge of a 
department store instead of a little store with one 
clerk for an assistant. Some were simply over- 
whelmed by their new burdens, or more possessed 
with the pride of authority than its efficient exertion. 
They were the ones who would show reserve officers 
that building a bridge or baking a loaf of bread or 
putting up a crane or organizing a laboratory was a 
different matter when you did it for the army. Some 
who had vitality and concentration were hopelessly 
lacking in capacity for organization. They were 
particularly impressed with their awful responsi- 
bility in having to train reserve officers not only in 
combat but in the Services of Supply. They would 
not admit that there was anything about the army 
which a reserve officer could do as well as a regular. 
The capacity of many for prolonged controversy; 



436 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

over theory and for writing memoranda was 
astounding; a result of the days of talking " shop " 
and speculative discussion at the posts. Where 
naval officers have always a fleet in being, and are 
always on a war footing — which means a successful 
secretary of the navy if he will only sign the papers 
placed on his desk — army officers had only an 
army in imagination, which meant that a " suc- 
cessful " secretary of war must indeed be a great 
man. 

From the first there was a struggle in France be- 
tween two elements: between the ruthlessly progres- 
sive and the reactionaries who were set in traditions; 
between the able, energetic, ambitious, enduring, and 
others who might have finer but not as aggressive 
qualities; between the men who were sure of them- 
selves and those who were not. For his immediate 
advisers Pershing had to turn to the Leavenworth 
men, who had been trained in the theory of a large 
organization and who had used it as the basis of 
intelligent observation of the operations of the 
French and British armies. A Leavenworth man 
believed in Leavenworth men. He had enormous 
capacity for desk work which he had developed as 
a student at Leavenworth. A scholastic preparation 
thus became the criterion for practice in organiza- 
tion. Leavenworth men believed in the gospel of 
driving hard work; of rewards for success, and 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 437 

merciless elimination for failure — which is the basic 
theory of successful war. 

All armies are looking either back at the last war 
or ahead to the next. One element, leaning back 
on its oars, considers the lessons of the last war, if 
it were won, as setting all precedents for present 
policy. Another, usually the men who were not in 
the last war except as captains and lieutenants, con- 
siders that new conditions will again set new prece- 
dents in the next war. The officers in the forties in 
the days of the war with Spain and the Philippine 
rebellion, who chafed at the Civil War traditions 
of their seniors, now had command of divisions, 
while in the Great War the Leavenworth men 
who were in the thirties and forties were pushing 
up from below. If the later generation lacked rank 
on this occasion, it had power in France as the re- 
sult of Leavenworth and the new staff system, while 
promotion by selection called its ambition. 

Leavenworth graduates sat in the seats of the 
mighty on the right and left hand of the Commander- 
in-Chief; the tables of organization were of their 
devising; the orders signed by the Chief of Staff, 
which the divisional and the corps generals and all 
the generals of the Services of Supply had to obey, 
originated from this inner circle in the barracks 
buildings at Chaumont, which was surrounded with 
professional mystery. Divisional and corps chiefs 



438 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of staff were Leavenworth men in touch with the 
inner circle. The disrespectful thought of these 
officers as the Leavenworth " clique " ; but it was 
not the fashion to do much thinking aloud about 
them, such was their power. They did not think of 
themselves as a clique; not even the members of a 
secret society think of themselves in that way. They 
were a group of veterans, who if they had not the 
scars won in battle — we had had no great battles 
since the Civil War — had burned the midnight oil 
and played the war game together. They had, as 
volunteers, in order to learn their profession, when 
the people of the country knew no more of their 
existence than if they had been in a monastery, gone 
through a post-graduate course as rigorous as West 
Point itself. They thought of themselves as apostles, 
their voices unheard in a land saturated with pacifism 
and indifference, who, in fasting, prayer, and in- 
dustry, had studied the true gospel in their holy of 
holies. They alone had conned the pages of the 
sacred books behind the altar where the regular 
army kept the sacred fires burning. 

" War is the greatest game on earth," as one of 
them said. In this thought they had the same reason 
for enthusiasm in study as a chemist in his experi- 
ments or an architect in his building. In their school 
in the wheat fields of Kansas they were manipulat- 
ing in theory forces which made a hundred million 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 439 

dollar corporation an incidental pawn. But they 
were dealing with the imaginary, and the managers 
of the corporation with the real. When the war 
came all their forces of imagination became real. 

To be a " Leavenworth man " meant a title to 
staff position, which you must take whether you 
wanted it or not. There were many excellent of- 
ficers who never went to Leavenworth; officers who 
were masterly company, battalion, and regimental 
commanders, and who had the quality of natural 
leaders. They did not want to train for the staff. 
They preferred the line. Their ambition, nursed 
through the years of service, with never an assign- 
ment to Washington, was to make sure of a com- 
mand in the field if war came. 

" I had rather lead a battalion of infantry than 
be chief of staff of an army," as one of them said. 
Another said, early in the war, " I'm all for the 
Leavenworth men to do the chessboard work, but 
we'll find that they have studied so much that some 
of them don't know how to make decisions when 
they are dealing with a real instead of a paper 
army. I don't envy them. I obey their orders. I'll 
make a good regiment; that is all I ask — let me be 
with troops." He was right in saying that the men 
who stood high at Leavenworth ran the danger of 
being too academic for practical war, as surely as 
the best students at college are unfitted for practical 



44Q OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

business life. Yet all criticism of the Leavenworth 
coterie runs foul of the question: " What should we 
have done without them in France? " If you have 
to build a great bridge and there is no engineer who 
has ever erected one, why, it would be better to 
choose a man who had been through a first-class 
engineering school to make the plans, than to choose 
the contractors who got out the stone or sunk the 
caissons, or the financiers who furnished the funds. 
Every Leavenworth man had pet ideas of his own, 
as the result of his study, which he sought to apply 
when authority came to him, with inevitable inter- 
ference with team-play. Ke had all the enthusiasm 
of a graduate of the Beaux-Arts who is given a 
million-dollar appropriation to build a state capitol 
as his first assignment. 

In relation to our little army with its scattered 
posts, their problem in making a great army organi- 
zation was much the same as the transformation of 
Japan from medievalism to modernism, or amalga- 
mating and improving all the small plants of indi- 
vidual business of fifty years ago in a year's time into 
a modern trust. The thing required broad vision. 
Some of them possessed it, but not all, even if they 
were Americans. Such was the loyalty of grad- 
uates to Leavenworth that I have heard them say 
that it was the best staff school in the world. A 
French officer might respond: "Perhaps, but we 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 441 

have had more opportunities for practice in handling 
large bodies of troops." The British and French 
staffs thought that our men were worthy of the high- 
est praise; but they thought that our staff was inex- 
perienced and sophomoric. They would not have 
been averse, as we know, to taking over the staff 
direction of our army, which, considering the feeling 
of the line toward the staff on all occasions, would 
have led to additional inter-allied friction. Relations 
would be smoother by having the resentment of the 
men who bore the brunt of casualties directed into 
home channels. 

The Leavenworth men, thinking as army officers 
and for the army, did not wish to yield power. They 
wanted to establish a staff system and a tradition 
for a large American force, in the hope that universal 
service would be accepted and continued, making 
the system permanent. Where were they to get the 
host of additional staff officers required for the 
armies, the corps, and the divisions in battle? A 
few student observers could be sent to the British 
and French staffs; but not a sufficiently large num- 
ber when any outsider was in the way in the crowded 
quarters of a series of dugouts, or the ruined houses 
of a village. Moreover, Leavenworth wanted no 
system half British and half French, but one suited 
to our own army for all time. Leavenworth was 
always thinking of our military future. Following 



442 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

our national bent for excellence and this thought of 
the future, which led us to aim for the best gas mask, 
the best aeroplane motor, the best machine-gun, the 
best gas, the best of everything, Leavenworth pro- 
posed to make the best staff. To this tendency of 
ours to seek perfection the Allies might reply: " Per- 
fection is all very well; but we have tested equip- 
ment, and a staff system the result of three years' 
trial, and time is valuable against the German." 

Just as the West Point system, which takes the 
" plebes " in hand, was being applied in our train- 
ing camps, so Leavenworth staff college was repro- 
duced in France in the ancient city of Langres, near 
Chaumont, which had been a fortress in many wars. 
Here regulars worked beside reserves, while the 
regulars had no special privileges except the first 
choice of horses to ride. Here they were to learn 
how to solve the tactical management of troops in 
action, the technique of all the different G's of the 
staff: G-i and G-4, which had to do with transport 
and supply; G-2, which had to do with intelligence; 
G-3, with operations, and G-5, with training. 

There was much to teach in that three months' 
course. How long will it take to reach all the units 
of a division, billeted in ten villages in an area of ten 
square miles, with an order for movement? How 
will it be sent? How will it be written after consul- 
tation with G-i, who knows the transport available? 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 443 

Which units will march out first? How long will it 
take to entrain those going by train? If the motor 
transport, and the horse-drawn transport, too, have 
to go overland, what roads will they take to reach 
their destination? Have the drivers their maps? 
In making a relief in the trenches, how long will it 
take to march up and complete the task? 

Four German prisoners say one thing, four an- 
other, and three another. Take their reports in con- 
nection with aeroplane reports and general observa- 
tion. What is your decision as to the enemy's 
strength on your front? Two additional divisions 
are suddenly brought into your sector. How are 
you to feed them? An attack is planned to pinch 
out a salient. How long is to be your artillery 
preparation? What its character? What points 
will you cover with the corps artillery fire? What 
with the divisional howitzers? There is your map 
with the information in G-2's possession for G-3 to 
consider in working out details. The infantry must 
be preceded by a barrage worked out with a mathe- 
matical accuracy, that will be practicable for the gun- 
ners and the infantry. All the fundamentals of tech- 
nical knowledge were what arithmetic, algebra and 
geometry, and the strength of materials are to a 
bridge builder, in solving the problems presented to 
civilians, lawyers, engineers, and scholars of ages 
from twenty-five to forty-five, who worked them out 



444 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

and went to recitation in a school-room where they 
sat at little desks, as they did in boyhood days. 

The number of hours of study a student put in at 
Leavenworth had been a test of capacity — the reason 
for Leavenworth's existence. While officers who did 
not take the course were regarded somewhat in the 
light of outsiders, " We'll show these cits what it is 
to work," as one regular said. Langres was a very 
sweatshop in scholastic industry. It was a combina- 
tion of learning and an infinite amount of clerical 
detail for men many of whom were used to having 
their details looked after by clerks. British and 
French officers, acting as instructors and lecturers, 
elucidated the problems on the blackboard. As one 
saturated with war on the Western Front listened 
to preachment of fundamentals, I was impressed 
with how much the average man who has not seen 
war, and has taken his conception of it from a sol- 
dier charging or firing a gun, had to learn before 
he had the a b c's of modern war. 

One also wondered if all the hard work were 
always to the purpose. Practical Allied officers, 
who were always polite, thought that the students 
did so much grinding that they became dull and 
stale ; we were trying to teach them too many gener- 
alities. A knowing regular said one day to a re- 
servist: "You are too serious. The thing in the 
army is to make a show at this sort of gymnastics, — 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 445 

then use your common sense when you reach the 
front." This was in kind with a remark of one 
regular officer about another, whose information 
had led us astray: "I know him — a regular West 
Point trick. You must pretend you know, and be 
very definite in the pretense. That often gets over." 
It seemed to me one of the faults of the West Point 
system. 

The regulars had the advantage at Langres in 
that they had been ingrained in the military instinct, 
which is what is called the mathematical sense in 
a schoolboy who finds mathematics easy; but if the 
instinct were only that of cadet days and of com- 
pany drill, and their minds had not grown, they 
suffered from the little learning which is a dangerous 
thing. Though the average Leavenworth man — not 
in all cases a class A man — did not see, despite the 
Canadian example, how anyone could become a staff 
officer in a few months when you had to study at 
Leavenworth for years, it soon became evident that 
some of these reserve officers with finely trained 
minds, used to the application and competition of 
civil life, were showing themselves the superior of 
the regulars. This in the scholastic sense, without 
considering practice in action. There was one Leav- 
enworth man I knew who, though a master at solving 
problems in the classroom, seemed unable to solve 
any problem in action. Beside the Langres school 



446 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

we had a school of the line, and a candidates' school 
where men who had shown their leadership as pri- 
vates in combat might be educated in theory for com- 
missions. The reserve graduates of Langres were 
being sent out in the spring and summer of 191 8 to 
be assistants in the G sections of army and corps and 
divisions. In a few instances they even became 
chiefs of section of division staffs. They were prom- 
ised that one day they might wear the black stripe 
of the General Staff on their sleeves as the reward 
of efficient service. " Doping the black stripe " 
was the slang phrase for the grind at Langres. One 
day the reserve graduates might also have promo- 
tion, and one day, too, the reserve officers, captains 
and lieutenants and a few majors of the line, ar- 
riving with the divisions from the training camps — 
'as our organization grew and was knit together — 
might also have promotion. 

About this time promotion was becoming a form 
of intoxication with the regulars. They must be 
cared for first; in due course, after the reservists 
became soldiers, the reservists would have their turn. 
New tables of organization were being devised 
which called for more high-ranking officers. With- 
out rank the work could not be done, said his chiefs 
to the Commander-in-Chief, who once greeted one of 
them with the remark: "How many lieutenant- 
colonels must become colonels in order to do this 



LEAVENWORTH COMMANDS 447 

job?" The regulars kept apart from the reserves, 
forming a group in their own world. In their messes 
the talk ran on promotions: each new list brought 
its tragedies for men who found themselves jumped, 
and its triumphs for those who had jumped them. 
If you were not frequently promoted, it was taken 
as a sign that you were not " making good." Pro- 
motion depended upon the good will of your supe- 
rior, and sometimes, naturally and humanly, upon 
the fact that you might have served with him at an 
army post. Promotion became unconsciously cor- 
rupting. Some younger men who received their stars 
after swift passage through the lower grades hardly 
bore their honors with the equanimity of their 
elders. One chief of staff I knew had a Napoleonic 
grandeur. He hedged himself about with the eti- 
quette of royalty. If he had been presented with a 
three-cornered hat of the kind that Napoleon wore, 
he would have accepted it in all seriousness. Un- 
happily his work was not of the Napoleonic stand- 
ard. There was another chief of staff who was just 
the same man as a brigadier-general that he had 
been as a major. He never seemed busy; his work 
was always in order; his tactics were successful. He 
knew how to win men to his service, how to delegate 
authority. Had he been given command of an army 
he would have carried on in the same imperturbable 
fashion. 



448 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

" It will be hard on some of us regulars," he re- 
marked, " when we wake up the ! morning after ' 
and find ourselves majors back in the good old 
Philippines." 

Naturally, in this environment, the reservists 
caught the contagion of promotion. If promotion 
were the criterion of having done your " bit," well, 
then, what would your friends think of you if you 
returned with the same rank you had when you left 
home ? When you did return, you found that your 
friends could not remember whether you had been 
a major or a colonel. They were relieved if they 
might call you " mister " or Tom or George. It 
didn't matter to them what kind of insignia you had 
as long as you had been " over there," doing your 
bit. They had perspective which was hard to pre- 
serve in France. 



XXVI 



OTHERS OBEY 



Misfit and unfit sorted at Blois — Clan again — What to do with 
the " dodo " — Making good after Blois — Its significance to the 
regular — The fear of Blois in its effect on the reservist — 
Faults of reserve officers — Feeling of the medicos — Staff propa- 
ganda — Getting to troops — Staff and line — Slow weeding out. 

i 

When the promotion disease was most acute, how- 
ever, the word promotion never exercised over the 
army the spell of the word Blois. Though Blois 
was not mentioned in the press, it was as fa- 
miliar in the secrecy of the army world as Verdun, 
Ypres, Paris, or Chateau-Thierry. Every officer 
who was uncertain whether or not he was pleasing 
his superior stood in fear of Blois, which was 
the synonym of failure. Downcast generals and 
lieutenants traveled together from the front to 
Blois. 

What was to be done with officers who broke 
down in health, or who did not come up to the 
standards required in their work? They might be 
sent home; but white-haired generals and colonels 
who had reputations as able officers in time of peace 
were not wanted airing their grievances on the steps 
of the Army and Navy Building in Washington. 

449 



450 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

There was an injustice, too, in placing on any officer 
the stigma of having been sent back from France, 
which would react on the many capable officers 
who were recalled from France in order to apply 
their experience abroad in furthering our prepara- 
tions at home. Then, too, we needed the service 
of any officer who could do any kind of work 
in France. In the majority of instances it was not 
so much a question of being unfit as being " misfit." 
The thing was to put round pegs in round holes. 

The town of Blois near Tours became a depot 
for classification and reassignment of officers who 
had been relieved by their superiors. A Leaven- 
worth man who was in charge had the power to 
reduce an officer in rank if he thought this were 
warranted. He secretly interrogated the arriving 
officer, who was told that his record would not be 
considered against him; his superiors might have 
been unjust to him; if he had "stubbed his toe," 
this did not mean that he would do it again. 
Though the plan was as logical as the transfer of 
an employee of a business from the manufacturing 
to the selling branch, the object of the attention felt 
the humiliation none the less. Despite all propa- 
ganda to alleviate its association in the minds of 
fellow-officers, " being sent to Blois " had only one 
generally accepted significance, which was wickedly 
unfair to many a victim. There were superiors 



OTHERS OBEY 45 1 

who followed their subordinates to Blois; while the 
subordinates were later promoted, they sank into the 
desuetude of a routine position. Indigestion, a 
burst of temper, a case of nerves, of prejudice, of 
finding a scapegoat for a senior's mistakes, might 
start an officer away from the front with his unhappy 
travel order. I knew of instances where it was a 
tribute to the officer that he had been sent : a tribute 
to his honest effort, his initiative, his unselfish spirit 
in trying to do his duty under an incompetent, 
irascible superior, who himself should not have re- 
ceived the consideration of Blois but been sent to 
a labor battalion, in the hope that by a few hours of 
physical effort a day he might have earned a part 
of the pay and the pains his country had wasted on 
him. 

Considering how valuable was the regular's pro- 
fessional training for combat, and considering too 
that only half of the regular officers ever reached 
France, it was surprising how many regular officers 
were sent from the front to Blois. The percentage 
of regulars who failed in action was said to be as 
large as the percentage of reserves. The Leaven- 
worth group, aiming to be impartial in the ruthless- 
ness which they thought their duty, declared that 
when a man failed to make good he went, whether 
regular or reserve. 

" If there's a reserve officer who can do my job 



452 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

better than I can, I want him to have it," said a 
regular colonel of thirty-five. " I'll give all I have 
and do my best wherever I am sent. That's service 
and duty. My country thought I was fit to be an 
officer. It paid me to serve where I could serve 
best. What is the use of holding to the clannish 
idea that any regular is better than a reserve ? That 
isn't the idea of efficiency. If a man who has served 
only six months is better than a man who has served 
thirty years, the old regular ought not to growl. He 
ought to feel ashamed. He is beholden to his coun- 
try for having given him a livelihood for thirty 
years. He could not have earned as good a one 
in any other occupation." 

He was the same officer who had spoken his con- 
victions after my remarks at the maneuver at 
Leavenworth. Of humble origin, proving the demo- 
cratic test by his conduct, he was an honor to the 
profession of arms, — as he would have been to any 
profession. The whole army recognized his ability. 
Of course no reserve officer or National Guard 
officer could be better than he ; his subordinates were 
proud to serve under him. If his reward could have 
been judged by a monetary standard, he earned all 
the pay he had ever received from the government 
by one month's service in France. He would return 
to a major's rank under mediocre officers, whose 
work he now directed from the staff. 



OTHERS OBEY 453 

Had he made the remarks which I have just 
quoted to reserve officers when any regulars were 
present, even his ability would not have saved him 
from the charge of disloyalty to the clan. So the 
strain on class A men in the staff or in the line was 
heavy. As Leavenworth men, the Leavenworth! 
men stood together, thought the observing reserves 
— and with them, of course, I include National 
Guard officers — while the regulars, forming up 
against the magic inner circle, stood together as 
regulars in the magic outer circle. 

The human equation and friendships were bound 
to enter into the honest effort at impartiality. 
Here was a brigadier-general of fifty-five or sixty 
who had been your commanding officer at a post. 
He was hopelessly superannuated. There was no* 
place of responsibility in keeping with his rank 
where his services would not be fatal to efficiency. 
No one desired to hurt his feelings. Diplomacy 
must arrange cushions for him. He was given a* 
car, and aides, and sent about on inspections, to 
make reports which were received with serious at- 
tention, or he was given a first-class officer as chief 
of staff. One of these amiable " dodos," as the 
regulars called them among themselves — never in 
the presence of a reserve officer — complained, so 
the story ran, that " another general had a cut-glass 
vase for flowers in his limousine, and he had none.'* 



454 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The strife for cars befitting rank was almost as 
vigorous as for promotion, while some regimental 
commanders rode in side-cars or cars of a "low 
rank"; but they, who passed through shell-fire and 
bumped over shell-craters, would not have ex- 
changed their commands for the most luxurious of 
limousines flying along good roads out of sound of 
the guns. It was hard, indeed, that upstarts from 
Leavenworth in the name of John J. Pershing 
should consign to Blois, and from Blois to a base 
section of the S. O. S., veterans of thirty and forty 
years' service in the regulars. There was another 
method applied on one occasion, when a division 
commander told a brigadier who had mismanaged 
his command that his brigade would be cared for 
in the morrow's attack, and that he would have his 
chance to redeem himself in the manner of a brave 
man, by going " over the top." He went, of course, 
winning that respect which is given every man, re- 
gardless of age or ability, for unflinching courage. 
Others might have been given the same opportunity 
to win gold letters in the memorial hall at West 
Point as an enduring epitaph ; but there were strong 
arguments against this. The incompetent were not 
fit for the serious business of combat organizations; 
men's lives could not be trusted to their direction. 
In case of death, the officer's widow would receive 
a small pension, while if he survived and was re- 



OTHERS OBEY 45£ 

tired, he would receive retired pay enough to assure 
comfort to his family. 

The human equation reappears. A reservist was 
a stranger, a regular might be an old comrade, call- 
ing on a senior's affection and the loyalty to clan, 
when the latter considered sending an officer to 
Blois. Still other influences might make a regular's 
shortcomings more easily forgiven than a reservist's. 
If a regular did not succeed in carrying out orders, 
as he was a professional, failure must be accepted as 
unavoidable. In a word, if Ed or John with whom 
you had served could not put the trains through or 
take a machine-gun nest, then it was impossible. 

There was no such personal standard of profes- 
sionalism to apply to a reservist. Success must be 
the only standard for him. On the other hand, I 
did not envy some Leavenworth men, who leaned 
over backward in being resolute to comrades, when 
they should revert to their original rank and be once 
more serving under officers whom they had com- 
manded from the staff. " He's got it in for me," 
was an expression sometimes heard, as you will hear 
it in different forms in any class community. It was 
an excuse for having been sent to Blois. Mean- 
while, new grudges were being formed. It was dra- 
matic when a regular officer, who had been sent to 
Blois, upon reassignment to the front won his 
brigadiership in a brilliant action; but not so dra- 



456 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

matic as when a National Guard brigadier, who had 
had his stars removed at Blois, refused a colonelcy 
in the rear, received a majority in the line, returned 
as a major to his own brigade, and was killed in 
leading his battalion gallantly in a charge. 

The heartbreaks among the regulars must be 
more lasting than among the reservists. War was 
the regular's profession. He returned to live with 
his reputation in the army world. The reservists 
returned to the civil world, where the war would 
soon be forgotten. This accounted for the greed- 
iness for promotion, which throughout the lives of 
regular officers would be the mark of their careers, 
while the guerdon of the future for the reservist 
was success in another occupation. 

" Do these reservists want to jump in and take 
everything away from us, when they are in the army 
only for the war? " as a veteran regular complained 
when he was not receiving the promotion which he 
thought was his due. 

The more subordinates you had, the more chance 
of promotion. 

" Get a lot of young officers around you, form a 
bureau, and you will get a colonelcy in the new 
tables of organization," said one regular officer to 
another, both efficient, upstanding men. 

Toward the end we did not lack officers in num- 
bers for service in the rear. Our problem was to 



OTHERS OBEY 457 

prevent unnecessary expansion in superfluities. Our 
American energy was under pressure. The thing for 
regular or reserve was to show that he was as busy 
as any Leavenworth man. Both the British and 
French said we had too many typewriters, and were 
prone to excess motion, despite our wonderful ac- 
complishment. It was an obvious criticism, by 
officers in an established organization, of an organi- 
zation which was in the throes of creation. Big men 
might work with a purpose; but little men might be 
flailing out their vitality on old straw, in order to 
make a " show " before the senior who might either 
promote them or send them to Blois. 

One day a reserve officer suggested to a regular 
senior, who had been laboring long and hard over 
a problem, a solution which could be expressed in 
half a dozen lines, leaving the execution of the 
policy stated to subordinates. That conscientious 
regular trained in Leavenworth industry shook his 
head. He sent in ten pages, after burning the mid- 
night oil, which finally went up to Harbord himself. 
Harbord dictated a few sentences which duplicated 
the reservist's suggestion. " In line with my idea ! " 
said the regular. There was no reason why the 
reservist should expect credit. He was in service to 
help in any way he could to hasten the end of the 
war. 

I have in mind one regular staff chief, who won 



458 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

promotion and great credit because of his able 
subordinates. " He never knew," as one of the 
subordinates said. I am not sure that he was en- 
tirely unconscious, for he said: "These reservists 
have a lot of ideas. Of course they don't know any- 
thing about war." By the time the serious fighting 
began, they knew more than he knew. They were 
shrewd enough to let him think that their knowl- 
edge was his. 

Of course, he always held over them the fear of 
Blois and the promise of promotion. That fear of 
Blois killed many an officer's initiative. It made inde- 
pendent men into courtiers for favor from men for 
whom in their hearts they had no respect. The 
weak tried to play safe, as they studied a senior's 
characteristics. Lack of psychologic contact between 
the army post world and the world of the nation as 
a whole, and overwork, overworry, and lack of ap- 
preciation of their efforts sent many officers to Blois. 
It was one sure way of having a brief holiday. 
Young reservists especially became discouraged and 
fatalistic when they found that they were incapable 
of ever pleasing an irascible senior. Others who 
had the right kind of superior developed under his 
encouraging and understanding direction. All was 
a gamble in how commanding officers themselves 
developed under the test of war. 

A certain suspicion of civilians of whom they 



OTHERS OBEY 459 

knew so little had its inevitable influence in keeping 
regulars in all the important positions, even in the 
S. O. S. The army had to take the responsibility, 
and the army must therefore keep authority in its 
own hands. Was it surprising, considering the life 
they had led, that the regulars should think that 
civilians could not understand the honor and the 
ethics of the service which they had so jealously 
guarded against politicians and a misinformed pub- 
lic? Civilians were shrewd in worldly ways; they 
might use their positions for profit; they might in- 
culcate bad gospel. I heard of no peculation in that 
enormous and scattered organization, buying such 
gigantic quantities of supplies. We may have been 
extravagant, but we were clean — very clean, com- 
pared to the political contracts of Civil War times. 
The regulars kept to the honest traditions, even if 
some of their officers had become " dead from the 
chin up," to use a regular army expression. As an 
observer I dare indulge in only a few of the regu- 
lars' tart sayings about one another, sayings which 
of themselves were symptomatic of our restless 
energy for achievement, and of standards which 
were formed on achievement rather than pretension. 
If there were any graft, it was that of desire for 
power, of travel orders to see the front and France, 
and of other human weaknesses which were an in- 
evitable accompaniment of active ambition. 



4 6o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

It was my fortune to see the staff and the supply 
systems, to go in and out of the different head- 
quarters, and on up to the front itself. I had the 
keys to the doors of all the many compartments, each 
immured by the nerve-racking pressure of its in- 
dustry and exposure to death. I also saw the other 
armies at work. I knew the faults of reserves as 
well as of regulars. There were young officers of 
the line, good in scholarship and drill at the train- 
ing camps, who, not from any want of courage but 
from inability, failed under fire. Floating in on the 
wave of the quartermaster and ordnance corps in 
the hasty granting of commissions was many a major 
and captain who was worthless. Some had never 
earned in their occupations in civil life the pay they 
were receiving as officers. These were most ambi- 
tious for promotion. They were always grumbling 
that their organizing capacity was not recognized. 
To the regular they were examples in point, proving 
the wisdom of expert control to the last degree. 

Other reserve officers who were specialists in a 
business or profession, now that they were at war, 
considered it a hardship to have to do the same work 
that they had been doing in civil life. Others by 
their propensities for unbridled talk offended the 
regular ethics of secretiveness. Others who had 
been regarded as men of ability in their occupations 
were living on their reputations no less than some 



OTHERS OBEY 461 

of the older regulars. Under army conditions, in 
poor quarters on foreign soil, they seem to have had 
a further relapse. Men of reputation in civil life, 
who were used to having their work known through 
the press, once they were in uniform felt their help- 
less anonymity. Leavenworth, in its unfamiliarity 
with civil life, sticking fast to its prerogatives and 
its theory of war, said that all reserves, line and 
staff, should be given a hell's trial, and that those 
who survived would one day receive their reward — 
after all the regulars had been looked after, as the 
reservists remarked. 

Among the reserve officers were the physicians 
and surgeons, the most notable we had, in one of 
the most progressive of professions, who came to 
the aid of the army medical corps, which had to 
expand its organization with all the suddenness of 
the quartermaster corps. The standards of admit- 
tance to the army medical corps had been high; it 
had expanded its vision in sanitation in the Philip- 
pines, Cuba, and the Canal Zone; its practice was 
with soldiers in time of peace. The reserve medico, 
whether a great surgeon, a laboratory expert, or 
head of a hospital, was subject to a regular senior, 
often much younger than he, whose capacities might 
be first-class, or as inferior as his prejudices were 
numerous. No experts from civil life, in their 
sacred desire for efficiency, could feel the restrictions 



462 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

on their initiative more than the reserve medical 
officers; but be it said that we did build hospitals, 
we did equip them well, and, with General Per- 
shing's resolute support, the exacting health disci- 
pline included precautions against that disease which 
has ever been the curse of armies. 

Leavenworth would have no advertising. Not 
only for reasons o r military secrecy would censor- 
ship have no names mentioned, but also in keeping 
with the ethics of regular officers that publicity was 
unbecoming — a theory that was fine in the abstract, 
but in the application had to deal with human 
nature. The names of the Leavenworth men them- 
selves, holding the fates of division generals in their 
hands, were unknown to the public and to the mass 
of the army. Not reports in the press, glorifying 
a unit or its commander, but the military judgment 
of superiors was to form the criterion of praise. 
Never, indeed, had such power come to a group of 
men as to the graduates of that sequestered school 
in the wheat fields of Kansas, in charge of two mil- 
lion men. It was interesting to watch how rapidly 
some of them grew under responsibility, how used 
they became to accepting power as a matter of 
course ; and equally interesting how others remained 
scholars of Leavenworth, their vision still shut 
within its walls. 

They directed policy to keep up morale. Their 



OTHERS OBEY 463 

propaganda never forgot the army; and finally in- 
cluded, to my regret, that of hate and of atrocities 
accepted on hearsay. The Stars and Stripes, the 
A. E. F. newspaper, brought to France all the head- 
lines, the snappy paragraphs, the cartoons, the slang, 
which knit California to Maine, to arouse our en- 
thusiasm for the war. Our communiques, much 
studied and revised, had facility in concealment in 
place of outright prevarication, which was the pre- 
vailing fashion to keep up the spirits of the public 
behind the army by assurances that it was the enemy 
who was making the mistakes and suffering the 
heavier casualties. Fashions in uniform received 
much attention, too, from those with that inclination 
of mind. The overseas cap, without a visor to keep 
sun or rain out of the eyes, was none the less dis- 
tinctive. We might have designed a better one the 
day we started troops to Europe, if our staff at home 
had had information about European climatic con- 
ditions; but the number of things in which we might 
have shown prevision are too numerous to mention. 
They do not count now; for the war was won. The 
Allied communiques were right. Our victory proves 
that the enemy made all the mistakes. 

Considering the many regulars used in organiza- 
tion and instruction in France, the number of regular 
officers who served at the front must be, if exception 
is made of the youngsters from West Point and the 



464 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

provisional regular officers, relatively small. Re- 
acting to a " million men rising to arms in their 
shirt-sleeves," and to the popular conception of 
leadership as an officer rushing at the head of his 
men in a charge, Leavenworth held strictly to the 
idea of the chessboard system, which kept com- 
manders, including regimental, in touch with their 
communications, instead of leading charges, the bet- 
ter to direct the tactical movements of their units. 
In the National Guard and National Army, the 
majority of the majors as well as the captains and 
lieutenants were from civil life; so, too, were the 
captains and lieutenants in the regular divisions, al- 
ways excepting the regular officers, who did not 
average one out of six in the average regular 
battalion. 

No army staff was more given to the policy of 
alternating between line and staff than ours. Every 
officer on the staff felt that he had a right to lead 
a regiment or brigade before the war was over. 
Transfers were frequent. The result was gratifying 
to individual ambition. A line officer who had just 
learned field command took the place of a staff 
officer who was just becoming expert in his branch 
of staff work. The newcomer had to start in learn- 
ing fundamentals when his predecessor had been 
under a strain to keep up with the rapid develop- 
ments ; but how could you deny Tom, who was once 



OTHERS OBEY 465 

your lieutenant in the Philippines, his desire, after 
three months' confinement, to be " in it " for a while 
at the front? When he showed peculiar fitness for 
office work, the British and French would have kept 
him in an office. He had his daily exercise, and his 
periods of leave when he might recuperate from the 
mental strain, which was all the worse for a man 
whose heart was with the troops. The Germans, 
least of all inclined to consider the personal equation, 
had interchangeable corps staffs. When one became 
stale, it went into rest in the same manner as a divi- 
sion of infantry, while a fresh staff took its place. 
Their system was the same as having two office 
forces, interchanging at intervals, in a business where 
the offices were open night and day. We had not 
enough officers to allow holidays. All must serve 
double the usual office hours in any concern, Sun- 
days included — work as long as there was work to 
do, snatching intervals of sleep. In this the Leaven- 
worth men, I repeat, set all an industrious example. 
Their greatest fault first and last was lack of 
psychologic touch with the people of their country. 
They were too remote from the troops. " But you 
forget the men," as the C.-in-C. used to say to the 
chess-players. 

No staff can ever be popular with the line; and 
no line can ever satisfy the staff which works out its 
plans of attack on paper. The staff serves at a 



466 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

headquarters, and the line in the open under fire. 
The difference of the human equation is that between 
security and comfort, and death and hardship, which 
no philosophy can bridge. A staff officer who ap- 
peared at the front always looked conspicuously 
neat and conspicuously wise, as exotic as a man in a 
morning coat on a cowman's ranch. The line officer 
in earth-stained uniform, lean from his effort, eyes 
glistening with the fever of battle dangers shared 
with his men, as he entered a staff room to report 
was equally exotic in his surroundings, while he had 
a personal dignity whose chivalrous appeal no one 
could resist. 

Yet someone must do staff work. Some directing 
minds must arrange for the movement of the troops 
and their transport according to a system, and as- 
sure the presence of supplies and ammunition; 
someone must sit near the centering nerves of wire 
and wireless and telephone and messengers, and 
maneuver the units in battle. The more comfort- 
able they were, the better they did their work, inas- 
much as there was no reason for their sleeping on 
the ground when they could have shelter. 

Everyone familiar with the statics of war on the 
Western Front knew that you might have a good 
lunch at a division or corps headquarters, and two 
or three hours later you might be floundering in the 
mud, gas mask on, under bombardment. If you 



OTHERS OBEY 467 

spent a day in the trenches, your feelings became 
those of the men who were there, you knew the non- 
sense that was written for public consumption in 
order to keep the public stalwart for the war, and 
you held visitors and staff officers who came sight- 
seeing in the kind of humorous contempt that those 
who " busted bronchos " held the tenderfoot in the 
days when realities in the wild west resembled the 
moving-picture shows of contemporary times. The 
officer relieved from staff duty for the front was 
subject to the same influence. He was not long in 
command of troops before he began abusing the 
staff for its preposterous orders, while the line 
officer assigned to the staff was soon talking about 
the incapability of the line to carry out his direc- 
tions. 

Gradually slipping the round pegs into round 
holes and the square pegs into square holes, flounder- 
ing and stumbling, but keeping on, the process of 
organization continued, while the resolute will 
of the Commander-in-Chief laid down the lines of 
policy. For him to give an order, as I have said, 
did not mean that it would be carried out. He him- 
self was the victim of the system : one man depend- 
ent upon others for the execution of his plans, and 
largely dependent too upon inspections by others for 
reports of progress. His adjutants could form 
chains of influence of which he was unconscious. 



468 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

" Insubordination " is the most glaring of military- 
offenses, next to timidity under fire. It cannot be 
openly practised; but within the bounds of any closed 
society the effects of insubordination can be gained. 
To trace responsibility in time of action is laborious 
through channels where officers familiar with the 
craft of " passing the buck " may spin red tape end- 
lessly, though on other occasions they cut it with 
facility. Yet the phrase, " the C.-in-C. wants it," 
was the shibboleth of power. In war a democracy 
is right to confer autocracy. This means efficiency 
in concentration according as the character of its peo- 
ple is sound and efficient. The C.-in-C. and all pro- 
gressive officers had to fight the influences inherent 
in autocracy, which eventually make permanent 
autocracy effete through formality and intrigue. 

The leaven was working; we were passing through 
the inevitable evolution which had been foreseen. 
The officers who had come through the schools and 
training camps, watchful if silent, had learned their 
fundamentals thoroughly and up to date, without 
having to unlearn pre-war teachings. They were 
finding, as the Canadians and Australians found, 
that, once on the inside, the art of making war was 
not such a profound technical secret as they had 
thought. They were now able to judge their 
seniors by professional as well as human standards. 
Regulars, of the type who felt their feet slipping, 



OTHERS OBEY 469 

were naturally tenacious in keeping up the mystery, 
which was the capital of the inefficient. Regulars 
who were sure of themselves — having learned more 
of war in six months than in all their service — glad- 
dened at the prospect of the fulfillment of their 
dream of a great army, which was equal to any in 
the world. They felt the fewness of their numbers 
on the top of this tidal wave of the nation's man- 
hood in arms, which they must ride. An army has 
its public opinion, that of the mass of officers and 
men. Great leaders realize that this is supreme. 
Moltke courted it no less than Napoleon; Hinden- 
burg sought to hold it, and lost it. The American 
army was becoming the country's army — the coun- 
try as a whole trained to arms. The youth and the 
brains of the country making war its business had 
too large resources in leadership, once it had learned 
the technique of leadership, to submit to class rule. 
Your old regular sergeant, your old regular colonel 
must yield to the survival of the fittest in the com- 
petition of the millions. At the end of the Meuse- 
Argonne battle, excluding at the most twenty per 
cent of the regulars of sufficient rank for battalion 
and regimental command, I should say that there 
were five officers from civil life who were better 
than any regular in leading a battalion, and two or 
three better than any regular in leading a regiment. 
With the reservists I include the National Guard 



47o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

officers, though they had had military experience 
before the war. Arms was not their regular call- 
ing; but they were to prove that they were not 
amateurs. Our plans, as I have said, until the late 
summer all looked forward to a spring campaign. 
In the winter that preceded it there would have been 
many heartbreaks among the regulars; for the evo- 
lution no longer held in check would have had its 
fruition. The tidal wave would have broken 
through the barriers; we should have had many 
colonels and brigadiers from among the young 
officers from the training camps and the National 
iGuard. 

Called to the Meuse-Argonne battle, without ade- 
quate preparation or equipment, our organization 
imperfect, remarkable as it was considering the cir- 
cumstances, the burden of the leadership which 
meant success, as the account already shows, was 
with the officers from civil life. They led the com- 
bat units against the machine-gun nests. Did pro- 
motion matter for the moment to that sergeant who 
took over the platoon when his lieutenant was 
mashed by a shell or received a machine-gun bullet 
in the heart? Did it matter to the second lieutenant 
who was the only commissioned officer left to lead 
a company? To the boy captain, who had fought 
his way up from the ranks, or had not finished his 
college course before he went to a training-camp, 



OTHERS OBEY 471 

as undaunted he took charge of a battalion and con- 
tinued the attack? Staffs, sitting beside the tele- 
phones, waited on their reports. Did promotion 
matter to the men? I am weary of writing of staff 
and officers, who must have their part in the narra- 
tive. The men! We have heard much of them. 
We shall hear more. They won the battle — a sol- 
dier's battle. They saved generals and staff. It is 
their part which sent an old observer of wars home 
in pride and gratitude. 



XXVII 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 



Visualizing " over there " — Camping out in France — Unimportance 
of the leaders — Adopting "Jake" — America finding maturity 
— Playing the game — The coating of propaganda. 

If one by one all the sounds at the front from the 
thunders of the artillery to the rumble of the 
columns of motor-trucks were to pass from my 
recollection, the last to go would be that of the 
rasping beat of the infantry's hobnails upon the 
roads in the long stretches of the night, whether in 
the vigor of a rested division, in rhythmic step going 
forward into line, or of an exhausted division in 
dragging steps coming out of line. It was me- 
chanical and yet infinitely human, this throbbing of 
the pulse of a country's man-power. 

Whether or not the draft boards were always 
impartial, whether or not favoritism provided safe 
berths for certain sons, I know that the fathers or 
friends who kept a young man of fighting age out 
of uniform or away from France did him an ill turn. 
He had missed something which those who went to 
training camps or to France were to gain : something 

472 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 473 

not to be judged in terms of medals or bank 
balances. 

When the men returned from overseas, people 
wondered at their inarticulateness over their expe- 
riences. Subscribing to Liberty Loans and War 
Savings Stamps, eating war bread, making innumer- 
able sacrifices, relatives and friends had been living 
in their habitual world, traversing the same streets 
or fields in their daily work, and meeting the same 
people, — and sleeping in their accustomed beds. 
The war news that they had read came through the 
censorship, speaking in the assuring voice of propa- 
ganda, which had men cheering and singing in 
battle. Their sons and brothers had been in another 
world, whose wonders, agony, and drudgery had 
become the routine of existence in the face of death, 
which was also routine. They had seen the realities 
of war behind the curtain, which had offered the pic- 
tures of war as it was designed to be seen by the 
public. There was so much to say that they found 
themselves saying nothing to auditors who did not 
know that the Meuse-Argonne was a greater battle 
than Chateau-Thierry, or that the S. O. S. was the 
Services of Supply, or the difference between rolling 
kitchens and the ammunition train. Some finally 
worked up a story which was the kind that friends 
liked to hear. Only when they had their American 
Legion gatherings would they be able to find a com- 



474 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

mon ground where all their fundamental references 
would be understood. 

Much was written about the democratic results of 
millionaire and bootblack, farmer's son and son of 
the tenements, day laborer and cotton-wool youth, 
fastidious about his cravats, mixing together in the 
ranks. At the training camps our soldiers were on 
the background of home, and they were not facing 
death together. They knew their own country by 
railroad journeys and by living with men from dif- 
ferent States; but some observers think that one 
does not really know his own country until he has 
seen other countries. The training camp had be- 
come a kind of home. Its discipline was modest 
beside that of France; there were no hardships 
except the hard drill and routine. In France our 
soldier had no home. He was always changing his 
boarding place, though never his task as a fighting 
man. 

He did not see France as the tourist saw it, from 
a car spinning past finished old landscapes, between 
avenues of trees along roads that linked together 
red-tile-roofed villages, while his chauffeur asked 
him, after he had had a good dinner at an inn, at 
what time he wanted his car in the morning. He 
marched these roads under his pack, often all night 
long, while he was under orders not to strike a 
match to light a cigarette. He was drenched with 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 475 

winter rain when he was conducted to a barn door 
and told to crawl up into the hayloft, or conducted 
to a house door where he stretched himself on the 
floor in a room that had no heat. 

He was billeted in villages where the people had 
been billeting soldiers for four years. They wanted 
the privacy of their homes again as surely as he 
wanted to be back in his own home. The roads over 
which he marched he had to help repair, in winter 
rains, when old cathedral spires lacked the impres- 
siveness which they had to the tourists because they 
looked as cold as everything else, and when pic- 
turesque, winding canals merely looked wet when 
everything was wet. 

He knew other roads which were swept by the 
blasts of hell; he saw the beautiful landscapes through 
the mud of trenches and from the filthy fox-holes 
where he waited in hourly expectation of an attack; 
he knew the beautiful woods which fleck the rolling 
landscape with their patches of green as the best 
possible places for being gassed. 

The hand of authority was on him even in his 
holidays — he, the free American. He might not go 
beyond certain limits when he went for a walk, for 
otherwise all our soldiers within walking distance of 
the largest town would spend the day there, to the 
discomfiture of discipline and French regulations. 
If he secured leave, it was not to the Paris of which 



476 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

he dreamed, but to the area which the army had 
prescribed. For months and months our men fought 
and marched, going and coming past Paris, without 
a glimpse of the city of their desire. That Paris 
was not good for them all the high authorities 
agreed; besides, their services were too valuable to 
be spared for sight-seeing. 

From the day of their arrival they were under 
the whip of a great necessity: first, of keeping the 
Germans from winning the war, and then of win- 
ning the war before Christmas came. In the last 
stages of the war, they bore more than American 
soldiers have ever borne — more than the British, in 
their own limited sector with its settled appointments 
a day's travel from England; more than the French, 
fighting in their own country with leave to go to 
their homes — their own homes — once in four 
months. Our men had a real rest only when they 
were wounded or ill and were sent back to the hos- 
pitals and rest camps. 

When a soldier was not fighting, somebody was 
lecturing to him. His education was never com- 
plete. There was some new gas which he must avoid, 
some new wrinkle in fighting machine-guns which he 
must learn. As he had so much lecturing on the 
drill-ground and on the march and in billets about 
making sure that he did not destroy any property 
or take a piece of wood or use a tool that did not 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 477 

belong to him, the orators who came from the 
United States to tell him how to be " good " though 
a soldier, and how all the country admired him and 
depended upon him, were not so popular as they 
might have been, because he knew the character of 
his job by very bitter experience. How little such 
visitors knew of him — in his own world ! 

As distinguished from the officers of commis- 
sioned rank, we spoke of the privates as the men; 
also as the " doughboys," a name which long ago 
the cavalry, looking down haughtily from their sad- 
dles, applied to the infantry, as kneaders of mud. 
There was a gulf between officers and privates, 
settled in old military customs, which at least at the 
front grew narrower as the old influences were dis- 
solved in the crucible of fire. Many of the privates 
were superior to their officers. Many won their 
commissions in the training-camp of battle. I pre- 
ferred always to think of the whole of generals, 
colonels, " kid " lieutenants, and privates as men. 
It was the whole that was majestic; manhood as 
manhood, which was supreme. 

Officers, whether with one bar or two stars on 
their shoulders, were only the nails holding the 
structure of manhood together. They might be 
promoted and demoted; prune themselves on their 
rank; but the mighty current of soldiery was ele- 
mental as the flow of a river. Never had the part 



478 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of any high commander been relatively less impor- 
tant than in this war; in no army was this so true 
probably as in ours. By running through a list of 
names in this age of universal ability, you might find 
a score of leaders for corps or army who might be 
better than those in the field; but fresh divisions of 
infantry were not in such easy call. The names of 
officers who commanded more men than Napoleon 
or Wellington had at Waterloo, Meade or Lee at 
Gettysburg, were unknown to the public. Never had 
a single human being, no matter how many orders 
on his breast, appeared more dispensable than in 
this machine war with its enormous masses of 
troops. We had two million men in France. Every 
officer and man counted as one unit in the machine, 
according, not to rank, but to the giving of all that 
he had in him. Manhood and not soldiering was 
glorified. 

It was the great heart of our men, beating as the 
one heart of a great country — simple, vigorous, 
young, trying out its strength — on the background 
, of old Europe, which appealed to me. It was the 
spontaneous incidents of emotion breaking out of 
routine which revealed character. One day on a 
path across the fields near headquarters town, I 
met a soldier with a wound stripe who had been 
invalided back from the front. He was thick-set, 
bow-legged, with a square, honest face, and eyes 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 479 

slightly walled, and he was leading a bow-legged 
sturdy child of four years, whose one visible eye 
showed a cast resembling the soldier's own. The 
other eye was hidden by a drooping wool Tam-o'- 
Shanter about four sizes too large for the child's 
head, while his wool sweater and wool leggings were 
not more than two sizes too large. It was evident 
that a man and not a woman had bought his 
wardrobe, having in mind that the child was to 
be kept warm at any cost. The pair aroused my 
interest. 

" I heard all about adopting French war orphans 
through the societies," the soldier said, " and I con- 
cluded, when they sent me here, to pick out my own 
orphan. So I adopted Jake. Yes, I calls him Jake. 
You see, his father was killed by the boche and his 
mother croaked. He hadn't anybody to look after 
him, so I took over the job. Didn't I, Jake?" 

Jacob looked up with an eye that seemed to con- 
sider this a wonderful world created by the soldier, 
and removed his finger from his mouth long enough 
to say " Yep," which he had learned in the place of 
" Oui." 

" I'm going to take Jake home with me, and make 
him an American, ain't I, Jake? You're learning 
English too, ain't you, Jake? " — with Jake taking up 
his cue to prove that he was by responding " Yep ! " 
again. 



480 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

When they started on, I paused to look after 
them, with something catching in my throat, and as 
the soldier paused I overheard him saying: 

" I'm going to take you home. Don't you worry 
— I'm sticking to that, Jake. The French regula- 
tions will say that they ain't going to let you leave 
France when they're so short of kids over here, and 
the American regulations will say there ain't no room 
for kids on transports, and probably the censor will 
lip in too — but I'll bring you after the war if I can't 
now. You and me's fixed up a life pardnership, 
ain't we? You'll make a hit with my mother, all 
right. All you've got to do is look up at her just the 
way you're looking up at me and say ' Yep.' Oh, 
it'll be all right over there — no more of this war and 
regulation stuff ! " 

" Speaking a few words of French " could only 
open a chink in the barrier of language between our 
men and the French people. Wherever two Ameri- 
cans met they could begin talking without waiting 
on an interpreter. The common bond of language 
promoted the family feeling of the A. E. F. In all 
their relations our men saw with fresh eyes, in the 
light of foreign surroundings, how like they were, 
not only in uniform and equipment and ways of 
thought, but how distinctly American even the Eu- 
ropean born and the sons of European parents 
had become. Old differences disappeared in this 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 48 r 

new sense of a fundamental similarity. Men from 
the different parts of the United States came to- 
gether not only in the combat divisions but around 
the docks and railway yards and wherever they 
labored in the Services of Supply. Kansas, Oregon, 
and Maine had adjoining beds at a hospital, while 
a doctor from Pittsburgh or Oskaloosa, or a nurse 
from New York or Cheyenne, looked after them. 
Reserve officers who had been lawyers, merchants, 
engineers, gang foremen, bakers, bankers, manufac- 
turers, lived and worked together in keeping the 
army fed with shells and food. 

" The gang's all here," was as expressive of the 
soldier's feeling in the Great War as " There'll be 
a hot time in the old- town tonight " in the little war 
with Spain. To all in whom there was the germ 
from which it could develop, the stern fighting and 
effort brought a sense of personal power, quiet, ob- 
servant, undemonstrative ; and their sense of the pres- 
ence there in France of two millions of Americans — • 
scattered far and wide, omnipresent in their energy, 
welded into one mighty organization, pulsing with 
the heart of the home country three thousand miles 
away, as California looked Maine in the eye in that 
common family — brought a new sense of national 
power. It occurred to me that the A. E. F. symbol- 
ized how a great overgrown boy of a nation, with 
a puzzled feeling about its expanding physique, had 



482 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

suddenly become a dignified, poised, self-respecting 
adult. 

The men knew why they were in France, even if 
they did not express it in the phrases of oratory or 
propaganda. Their logic was as cold as their steel, 
as vivid as gun flashes. They were in France to 
beat the Germans. The period for argument had 
passed for them. They had the business in hand. 
Their bitterness toward the foe was not as great as 
that at home. Why waste words on him when you 
had bullets and shells to fire at him? He was taken 
for granted no less than burglary and murder: a 
positive material force to be overcome. 

Whether college graduates or street-sweepers, the 
privates were a guild as exclusive in its way — as it 
always has been — as a regular mess. They had 
voted themselves into their task. It was the will 
of the majority of their country that we go to 
France. The majority rules; general and other offi- 
cers may act as legatees for the majority. The thing 
was to " play the game." Those who rebelled 
found that there was nothing else to do. They were 
in the machine's grip. " Play the game ! " No 
phrase better expressed their attitude than this. It 
was a wicked, filthy, dangerous game. They had 
signed on for it ; they would see it through. 

Given this conviction, and no soldier will endure 
more hardship than the American. It was the bed- 
rock of adherence to that rigid discipline which in 



AMERICAN MANHOOD 483 

our western democracy surprised Europeans. We 
saluted on all occasions — what a punctiliously salut- 
ing army we were ! — and followed all the rules of 
etiquette that the experts said were necessary, and 
learned to take " bawlings out " with soldierly phi- 
losophy. As children know their parents, the men 
knew their officers' characters; a fresh replacement 
lieutenant was promptly " sized up," but final judg- 
ment was reserved until he had led them under fire, 
where he must stand the real test. It was a relief to 
them that they did not have to add an extra salute 
for every grade of an officer's rank. One salute 
would do for a general as well as a second lieutenant. 
Generals passed them on the road in cars; generals 
inspected them. They did not take much interest in 
generals, who were also a part of the game to them. 
Company and battalion commanders alone could 
make their personal leadership felt. They were the 
" heroes " when they were good, and rightly so. 

Officers made strange guesses sometimes as to 
what their men were thinking. The men were wiser 
than many officers knew; for they were the mass in- 
telligence of America. They understood that the 
Stars and Stripes was propaganda; but it was inter- 
esting. They read it with avidity. Propaganda was 
one of the parts of the mysterious, ugly game. I 
have heard it compared to the coaching from the 
bleachers at a league game. The men smiled over 
the communique's records of actions in which they 



484 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

participated. Communiques were a part of the game, 
helping propaganda to coach from the side lines. It 
would not do to say that a company had been sent 
by mistake into interlocking machine-gun fire to take 
a town which the survivors had to yield. When the 
men read the home papers, there was no mention of 
their losses or their suffering. One might think from 
the accounts that they were enjoying themselves im- 
mensely, and were quite comfortable in the fox-holes. 
This, too, was a part of the game. 

They were there to see the game through. The 
sooner it was through, the sooner they would go 
home. Veterans who had spent one winter in France 
did not want to spend another; those who had not 
did not care to try the experience. They had no 
more reason for liking France than a man who sleeps 
on the ground in Central Park in December, eating 
cold rations, under machine-gun fire, has for liking 
New York City. " I want to get back to the cac- 
tus ! " as an Arizona man said. All were fighting to 
reach home and be free men again; freedom having 
a practical application for them. The longer they 
were in France, the more they felt that they were 
fighting for America. As Americans they were on 
their mettle. Such was the spirit that carried them 
as Americans through the Meuse-Argonne, which 
was the American army's battle. 



XXVIII 

THE MILL OF BATTLE 

Wet misery — " Penetratin'er and penetratin'er " — The men behind 
the lines — Back to " rest " — Replacements as bundles of man- 
power — Reliefs in the fox-holes — Before and during an attack 
— Dodging shells — A struggle to keep awake — And " on the 
job " — Will, endurance, and drive — The wedge of pressure. 

As the processes of the Argonne battle became more 
systematic, they became more horrible. They would 
have been unendurable if emotion had not exhausted 
itself, death become familiar, and suffering a com- 
monplace. The shambles were at the worst during 
the driving of our wedges in the second and third 
weeks of October. The capacity to retain vitality 
and will-power in the face of cold and fatigue, and 
not to become sodden flesh indifferent to what hap- 
pened, was even more important than courage, 
which was never wanting. The thought of ever 
again knowing home comforts became a mirage; a 
quiet trench sector, with its capacious dugouts and 
occasional shell-bursts, became a reminiscence of 
good old days. Paradise for the moment would be 
warmth — just warmth — and a dry board whereon 
to lay one's head until nature, sleep finished, urged 
you to rise. 

48s 



486 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

We were learning what our Allies, and the enemy 
too, suffered in the winter fighting of Verdun and 
the Ypres salient. The Europeans, we must not for- 
get, were fighting in their own climate. They were 
used to having their oxygen served in the humidity 
of a clammy sponge pressed close to their nostrils; 
we to having our oxygen served in dry air. We suf- 
fered less at home when ice covered lakes and 
streams than in mists and rains in France at forty 
and fifty degrees. There is sunshine on snow-drifts 
and frosty window-panes in our northern States in 
midwinter, as well as on the shores of the Gulf of 
Mexico; but we never saw sunshine, as we know 
sunshine, in the Meuse-Argonne, though there were 
days which the natives called fair, when the sun was 
visible as through a moist roof of cheese-cloth. 

" Td charge a machine-gun nest single handed, if 
I could first sit on a steam radiator for half an 
hour," one of our soldiers said. 

It was summer during the Chateau-Thierry fight- 
ing; a kindly summer, resembling our June in the 
northern, or our April in the southern States. The 
enthusiasm of our first important action gave hard- 
ships a certain glamour. Men could sleep on the 
ground without blankets ; the wounded did not suffer 
greatly from cold, if they remained out over night 
Cold rations were tolerable. Clothes and earth dried 
soon after a rain. Fox-holes did not become wells 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 487 

on the levels, and cisterns on the slopes. Guns and 
trucks did not cut deep ruts beside the roads or in 
crossing the fields. Summer was ever the time for 
war in temperate climates; winter the time of rest. 
It was so in our Civil War. 

The battlefield was a sombre brown, splashed by* 
liquid grays. No bright colors varied the monotony 
of the landscape except the hot flashes from gun- 
mouths; there were none overhead against the leaden 
and weeping sky except the red and blue of the bull's- 
eye of an aeroplane, and the gossamer sheen of its 
wings. Khaki uniforms and equipment, and the tint 
of trucks, automobiles, caissons, and ambulances 
were all in the protective coloration of the surround- 
ing mud. A horse with a dappled coat, or with dark 
bay or black coat, shining in the mist, was a relief. 
The sounds were the grating of marching hobnailed 
shoes, the rumble of motor-trucks and other trans- 
port, the roar of the guns, the strident gas alarm, 
the bursts of shells, the staccato of machine-guns: 
all in an orchestrated efficiency which wasted not 
even noise in conserving all energy to the end of 
destruction — if we except the song of marching com- 
panies at the rear, and the badinage with which men 
diverted one another and themselves from their real 
thoughts. 

There were the one-way roads where all the traffic 
was going in one direction, either to or from the 



488 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

front, all day and all night in orderly procession. 
Along the roads our negro laborers, who all seemed 
to be giants, kept filling in stones and shoveling in 
earth to mend broken places. They were in a mar- 
velous world, whose diversions tempted a holiday 
spirit. They rested on their spades as they watched 
a general's car, or a big gun, or a tank, or one of a 
dozen other wonders on wheels pass by; or, the 
whites of their eyes showing, looked around at the 
sound of the burst of a shell or an aviator's bomb; 
or aloft at the balloons and passing aeroplanes and 
duels in the air. 

" How do you like this weather? " I asked one. 

" It's ve'y penetratin' and ve'y cold, seh," he 
replied. " They say it keeps on getting colder and 
colder, and penetratin'er and penetratin'er, and 
spring nevah comes." 

" It will not, if you don't work hard and win the 



war." 



" I'm goin' to work ve'y hard. We've gotta win 
this war, seh; or we'll all freeze to death — only it's 
pow'ful hard keeping yo' mind on work, seh, when 
so much is goin' on." 

Thus at the front the colored man kept open the 
passageway for the supplies which the colored man 
had unloaded at the ports. He was truly the Her- 
cules of physical labor for us. 

In the zone of battle, back of the infantry and 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 489 

artillery lines, many men had many parts, all under 
shell-fire and hardships; the rolling kitchen men, the 
ammunition train and ambulance drivers ; the salvage 
men gathering up the overcoats, blankets, rifles, gas 
masks, and other equipment discarded in the course 
of an attack; and the much-abused military police- 
men, who made drivers keep their lights turned off, 
and insisted, in the latter days of their high author- 
ity, upon colonels' automobiles obeying orders, with 
the same impartiality that policemen at street cross- 
ings show in " stop " and " go " to the " flivver" 
delivery wagon and the limousine of the man who 
groans over the size of his income tax. 

Out of the shelled zone in the early morning the 
shattered companies of expended divisions came 
marching back from the front. Sometimes they 
broke into song. Usually they were too tired to 
sing; the recollection of what they had seen was too 
near for rollicking gayety, at least. They were go- 
ing into " rest " in some ruined village or series of 
dugouts, or possibly into a village that had not been 
shelled; to be " Y. M. C. A.'d " and deloused, to 
receive fresh clean clothing and warm meals. There 
were no beds or cots for them, with rare exceptions, 
but floors and lofts, as we know. Of course, they 
were not rested in one day, or two or three, or even 
ten. They had given an amount of their store of 
reserve energy which it would take them a long 



490 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

time to renew. Drill began as soon as they had had 
their first long round of sleep. New officers took 
the place of the fallen: officers who often did not 
know their men or the battle. Replacements came 
to fill the gaps in the ranks, and share all the drills 
and the lectures which applied the latest battle les- 
sons. Tired brains reeled with instruction. 

There was a plan to return convalescent wounded 
to their original divisions, but in the pressure to 
hurry all available man-power forward to fill the 
greedy maw of the front it could be carried out only 
in a limited way. Thus, whether convalescent or 
newcomers, the replacements might come from a 
part of the country widely separated from that of 
the division which they were joining, and upon the 
division's welcome home to the locality of its origin 
by relatives and friends find themselves still far from 
their own homes. Maine was fighting in the ranks 
of a battalion from Chicago ; New York in the ranks 
of a battalion from Kansas. The longer a division 
had fought, the less regional its character. The 
fortune of war never fell more unkindly than upon 
the National Army divisions which arrived late in 
France and were broken up for replacements, or, 
even in those final days when victory beckoned us to 
our utmost endeavor, turned into labor troops in 
the S. O. S. In that vital juncture, they went where 
they were most needed, which is a soldier's duty. I 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 49 r 

have seen groups of replacements, who had had so 
little training that they hardly knew how to use their 
rifles, moving up through the shelled area to find the 
battalion in reserve to which they were assigned. 
Only two or three weeks from American training 
camps, shot across France, strangers indeed on that 
grim field, they were man-power which could take 
the place of the fallen. 

In the late afternoon on the roads near the front 
one might see the troops of rested divisions march- 
ing forward to relieve expended troops. At Cha- 
teau-Thierry, our men, I know, went singing toward 
the line of shell-bursts. I am told that many put 
flowers in their rifle barrels and their button-holes. 
No doubt they did. So did the French and British 
in the early days of the war. There were no flowers 
on the Meuse-Argonne field, only withering grass 
and foliage. To sing was to attract the enemy's 
attention. The first enthusiasm had passed; our 
spring of war was over; our winter of war had come. 
Most of the men whom I watched going forward 
looked as if they appreciated that there was wicked* 
nasty business ahead, and they meant to see it 
through. 

It was dark when they came into the zone where 
the transport had its dead line. The length of their 
march was often in darkness if we were making 
concentrations for an attack. Some went to their 



492 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

appointed places as reserves in the warrens dug 
on reverse slopes; others in cautious files, led by 
guides from the troops in position who knew the 
ground, went on until they came to the little pits 
where the outposts were lying, or to machine-gun 
posts which faced the enemy under the whipping 
of bullets and the bursts of shell-fire and gas. 
They were the very point of the wedge which all 
the strength of our nation was driving. Wet to the 
skin, filthy, hollow-eyed, the occupants gave up 
their places to the newcomers, whose officers located 
their positions on the map, and received local in- 
formation from their predecessors about the char- 
acter and direction of fire and many details. It was 
like a change of shift in a factory — all as business- 
like as possible. 

How different this front from the days of station- 
ary warfare, with the deep trenches with parapets 
of sand-bags! Individualism here returned to its 
own. Patrols must be sent out to keep watch of 
the enemy; machine-guns and riflemen must be ready 
for a counter-attack, — which were variations from 
that deadly monotony of lying in a wet hole in the 
ground, whether on a bare crest or among the roots 
of trees in a wood. Blood-stains, torn bits of uni- 
form, meat tins, and hard bread boxes formed the 
litter around the fox-holes, which marked the stages 
of progress where we had dug in. The young offi- 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 493 

cers had to creep from fox-hole to fox-hole, keeping 
touch with their platoons, and bearing in mind all 
the instructions, regardless of exposure to cold and 
fire. The men must not forget anything they were 
told. Their gas masks must always be ready; they 
must " stick to the death " when that served the 
purpose of their superiors. Nothing except war's 
demands could have won them to such willing sub- 
mission to such a hideous existence. 

If there were to be an attack the next morning, 
then stealthily the men of the first wave came up to 
the line of the fox-holes and hugged the clammy 
moist earth, while they were to keep their spirits 
hot for their charge. Their officers had to study 
the ground over which they were to advance; con- 
sider the speed of the barrage which they were to 
follow; carry out amazingly intricate maneuvers, — 
not knowing what volume of shell and machine-gun 
fire would meet them as they rose to the charge in 
the chilliest hour of the day, at dawn, when the 
ground reeked in slipperiness from the mist. The 
night before an attack always had the same oppres- 
sive suspense, the same urgency on the part of all 
hands in trying to be definite under the camouflage 
of darkness — hazard omnipotent in its grip on every 
man's thought. 

After the attack came the hurry call for artillery 
fire on points which had checked our advance; the 



494 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

summoning of reserves to add more pressure; the 
eagerness for exact reports from out of the woods 
and ravines where our men were struggling; the 
hurried flight of messengers running the gamut of 
machine-gun bullets ; the glad news of gallant charges 
going home; the sad news of companies " shot to 
pieces " ; the filtering back of the walking wounded, 
and the stretcher-bearers carrying those who could 
not walk; prostrate forms waiting on ambulances, 
and busy doctors at the triages; all so habitual 
that its wonder had ceased even for our young 
army. 

If you were wary, studying your ground, eyes 
and ears alert, you might travel far in that region 
beyond the dead line of transport; or you might in- 
vite a burst of machine-gun fire at the outset of 
your journey. When it came, or the scream of a 
shell announced that it would burst in close prox- 
imity, as you sought the nearest protection with an 
alacrity that increased with experience, you indulged 
in that second of prayer, blasphemy, or fatalistic 
philosophy which suited your mood. Some men 
laughed and smiled; I do not think, however, that 
they were really amused. The farther you went, 
the more deadly the monotony. When you had seen 
the front once, you had seen it all, in one sense; in 
another, little. After that, going under fire was in 
answer to duty or the desire to be nearer the reali- 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 495 

ties. Every man was subjective at intervals. The 
less time he had to think of anything but his work, 
the more objective he was. One man might be 
killed when he left the parapet the first time he 
was under fire; another might go through showers 
of missiles again and again, and never receive a 
scratch. I have marveled, considering the number of 
men whom I have seen fall, how chance had favored 
me. The high-explosive shell I always found the 
most hateful with its suggestion of maiming for life. 
Bullets were merciful. They meant death, or a 
wound from which, except in rare cases, you would 
recover. Fighting in the open as our men did in 
the Meuse-Argonne, all their bodies exposed to 
machine-gun nests, the percentage of dead was often 
only one in six or seven, and in some cases only one 
in ten, to the wounded. In the Ypres salient, con- 
spicuously, and elsewhere in the old days of trench 
warfare, when only heads were exposed above the 
parapet, and shells mashed in dugouts and struck in 
groups of men, the percentage was one in three, and 
even one in two. 

Those who saw our returned veterans parading 
in clean uniforms have little idea of their appearance 
in battle, their clothes matted with mud, their faces 
grey as the shell-gashed earth from exhaustion, when 
they had given the last ounce of their strength 
against the enemy. This picture of them makes a 



496 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

march over pavements, between banks of people re- 
warding them with cheers for what they had endured, 
seem exotic pageantry. No one can know except by 
feeling it the physical and mental fatigue of this 
siege battle. There was always the contrast of effort 
at high nervous pitch and the utter relaxation of 
moments of inaction. Memories of weary men 
prone on the earth, or lying on caissons or gun 
limbers, go hand in hand with memories of our 
bursts of " speed " when orders summoned weari- 
ness to another impulse of effort. Nature compelled 
sleep at times, even in the cold; and men awoke to 
find that they had pneumonia or " flu." It was not 
only the wounded, but the sick, who were dripping, 
painfully hobbling shadows along the muddy roads. 
The medical corps accomplished a wonder I do not 
understand in the low percentage of mortality. 

The battle was a treadmill. If there were men of 
faint hearts or dazed by fatigue, they had to keep on 
going. The number with an inclination to straggle 
was infinitely fewer than in the Civil War. Not only 
battle police but something stronger held them in 
their places in the machine : public opinion. We were 
all in it; we must all do our share. The spirit of the 
draft was applied by the common feeling. A sol- 
dier who might sham illness or shell-shock — which 
was rare indeed — if his malingering were not un- 
derstood at a glance, must pass the test of a search- 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 497 

ing diagnosis. I have in mind such a case, of a sol- 
dier who came into a triage. 

"Well, what's the matter with you?" asked the 
medico, looking at him in gimlet intensity as their 
eyes met. 

" Nothing, except tired, I guess. I'm feeling bet- 
ter. I'm going back to the front," was the reply. 

The wonder is that there were not more men who 
succumbed, not to fear or fire but to the strain. 
There were instances of insanity, of temporary illu- 
sion, of mind losing control over body — shell-shock, 
or whatever you choose to call it — which sent a sol- 
dier back through sifting processes for specific 
treatment; but no soldier well enough to fight might 
escape his duty. Never, I repeat, were there so 
few who had any such thought; and this under con- 
ditions worse than Valley Forge. Where heroes 
of that day only knew want and cold in camp, they 
did not have to fight at the same time. The lack 
of warm food was alone enough to weaken initiative 
in men used to comforts and to being well fed. We 
tried to force the rolling kitchens up to the front, 
but it was impossible on many occasions. Division 
staffs might say they were up — and they were, in 
some parts of the line, but not in all. The men 
growled, of course. They had a right to growl. 
They growled about many things. The lack of ar- 
tillery fire, the failure of our planes to stop enemy 



498 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

planes from flying low with bursts of machine-guns, 
orders that made them march and counter-march 
without apparent reason. They growled, but they 
kept on the job. 

I always think of three words to characterize 
the battle. Will, endurance, and drive : the will to 
win, the endurance which could bear the misery neces- 
sary to win, and the drive which by repeated at- 
tacks would break the enemy's will. It was the old 
accepted system; but its application is the test of 
the soldier in every cell of brain and body. The 
high command could supply the orders, but the men 
must supply the qualities which could carry out the 
orders. 

" It's drive, drive, drive ! " as one of the soldiers 
said. " All the way down from Washington, through 
Pershing, to the lieutenants, to us — and there's no- 
body for us to drive except the Boche " — an enemy 
who was a mighty soldier. We tried our steel 
against no inferior metal. To say otherwise is not 
to allow just tribute to ourselves. 

All our national energy, our pride, came to a head 
in the fields of the Argonne. We can be ruthless 
with ourselves and with one another. We consumed 
man-power like wood in a furnace. Some men and 
divisions gave their all in the first period of the 
battle; others in a later period; others in the final 
period. The thing was to give your all. For officers 



THE MILL OF BATTLE 499 

there was always the fear of Blois; of being sent to 
the rear. I know of an officer who staggered at the 
door of division headquarters; and then stiffened and 
drew in his chin as he entered. 

" How are you? " asked his division chief of staff. 

" All right. Never felt better." 

Then his hand went out to the wall to keep him 
from falling. This was the right spirit. Yet he 
must have rest. He could no longer command three 
thousand men. 

One day an officer might seem fully master of 
himself and his task; the next day he " cracked." 
Superiors, breaking under the strain, were unjust to 
subordinates who could not carry out orders to take 
a series of machine-gun nests. Personal fortunes 
were subject to the " break in luck." 

Favoring circumstances honored officers who per- 
haps had not done as well as those who were con- 
sidered to have failed. Success was success; failure 
was failure. Time was precious. 

" Finding that X — was not close enough up to 
his battalion, I immediately relieved him," was the 
matter-of-fact report of a colonel on a major, which 
meant tragedy to the major; the next day the 
colonel himself might " crack." The young lieu- 
tenants of platoons and companies, burdened with 
their instructions and maps, were the object of the 
accumulated pressure from senior officers. They 



5 oo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

could always charge. There was one sufficing 
answer to criticism — death. It came to many 
against impossible positions : yet not in vain. Every 
man who dared machine-gun fire added to the 
enemy's conviction of our determination to keep on 
driving until we had " gone through." 



XXIX 

THEY ALSO SERVED 

From tambourine to doughnut — The " Y " and the canteen — Too 
much on its hands — Other ministrants — Manifold activity of 
the Red Cross — But not at the front — Honor to the army nurses 
— The chaplain's label immaterial. 

Of the auxiliary organizations serving with the army 
the Salvation Army was nearest to the soldier's 
heart, and the Y. M. C. A., or the " Y," as the 
soldiers knew it, the most in evidence. When the 
pioneer Salvationists appeared in our training camps 
early in the winter of 19 17-19 1 8, some wits asked 
if they were to beat the tambourine and hold expe- 
rience meetings in the trenches. Soon they were 
winning their way by their smiling humility. They 
were not bothered by relative rank, which gave some 
of the personnel of the other auxiliaries much 
concern. 

" If there's anything that anybody else is too busy 
to do, won't you let us try to do it? " seemed to ex- 
press their attitude. 

After the fighting began, it was evident that on 
campaign their emblem was not the tambourine but 
the doughnut. When our soldiers came out of the 

501 



502 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

battle, whom should they see standing in the mud 
of the shelled zone but the khaki-clad Salvation 
lassies, smilingly passing out doughnuts and hot 
coffee — free. The tired fighter did not have to 
search his pockets for money. All he had to do was 
to eat the doughnuts, and drink the coffee. That 
made a " hit " with him. 

The men workers of other auxiliaries went up 
under fire, and distributed chocolate and cigarettes. 
Yet nothing in their gallantry or devotion could have 
the appeal of the smiling lassies offering free dough- 
nuts and hot coffee to a man just out of the shambles, 
when his emotions were gelatine to the impressions 
that would endure. The Salvationists were ready 
night and day to bear hardships and do cheerfully 
any kind of drudgery. There were relatively few 
of them ; they filled in gaps, depending upon the per- 
sonal human touch, which they exerted with ad- 
mirable " tactics," as the map experts of the staff 
would say. 

Possibly the soldier was a little unfair to the 
"Y"; possibly, too, the "Y" was the object of 
critical propaganda, while it neglected propaganda 
on its own account among our soldiers, though not 
at home. Where nothing was expected of the Salva- 
tion Army, everything was expected of the " Y." It 
must have motion pictures, singers, and vaudeville 
artists, and huts wherever American soldiers congre- 



THEY ALSO SERVED 503 

gated from end to end of France; this was a part 
of the ambitious plan, although it could not get the 
tonnage allowance from home, or the supplies in 
France, to carry it out. Another part was that of 
really taking the place of a company exchange. Here 
the " Y " put its head in a noose ; but not unwittingly. 
When the proposition came from the army to the 
" Y," its answer was in the negative. 

"Aren't you here to serve?" was the army's 
question. To this the " Y " could only say, " Yes, 
sir." At that time the army authorities — not fore- 
seeing conditions which later developed — were ap- 
plying the theory that gifts to the soldiers meant 
charity: as a self-respecting man he would want to 
pay for his tobacco, candy, or other luxuries. 

The " Y " had no such generous fund as the Red 
Cross ; it could not build huts and theaters, sell cig- 
arettes, chocolate, sandwiches, pie, or furnish meals 
below cost. In the early days when our soldiers 
were hungry for chocolate, and none was arriving 
from home, the " Y " bought it at exorbitant prices 
in the local market, charging what it had paid. Later 
it had supplies from the quartermaster. As soon as 
a soldier appeared in a town, he asked, " Where is 
that blankety-blank ' Y ' ? " If there were no " Y " 
hut, canteen, or motion picture show, his conclusions 
were inevitable, and his remarks sometimes unprint- 
able, especially if he could not buy his home brand 



5 o 4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of cigarettes. It was the " Y's " business to be onj 
hand, no less than that of the quartermaster 
department to see that he was given his daily 
rations. 

He did not receive his pay more regularly than 
his mail. If he had no money, though he might g 
to the " Y " motion picture show, he could not get 
cigarettes, chewing gum, or pie. On one occasion 
when a " Y " truck loaded with cigarettes came to: 
the rescue of the tobacco-famished at the front, the; 
besieging purchasers, when they opened the pack- 
ages, found a slip inside, saying that they were from 
a newspaper's free tobacco fund. The fat was in 
the fire. The " Y " might give away all that truck 
load of cigarettes as it did, return the money of the 
deceived purchasers, and it might give away a dozen 
trucks of sales cigarettes; but the explanation that 
the quartermaster department had mixed the free 
cigarettes with sales cigarettes, the " Y " being offi- 
cially credited for payment for all, could never over- 
take the circumstantial report of the " Y's " 
profiteering, which grew as it was helped on its 
travels, perhaps, by the u Y's " enemies. 

If a division commander wanted an errand done 
in Paris, a check cashed, or any comfort or enter- 
tainment for his men, he called on the " Y," which 
was not " volunteer," but " drafted." No one 
ever stopped to think what the army would have 



THEY ALSO SERVED 505 

done without the " Y " huts, motion pictures, theat- 
ricals, and canteens. 

After the armistice, when a large number of re- 
turned British and American prisoners arrived at 
Nancy, I recollect how the local head of another 
auxiliary organization called up the " Y " on the 
telephone, saying: "We're helpless. Can you do 
anything?" 

" Send them on! " was the answer. 

" There are eight hundred, all hungry. Have you 
food for them?" 

" No, but we'll find it — " which was the spirit of 
the S. O. S. that kept us supplied in the Meuse- 
Argonne battle. Another type of " Y " man 
might, however, have thrown up his hands in 
despair. 

The " Y " was an enormous and mixed force, 
criticized, reasonably I think, for lack of organiza- 
tion to keep pace with its ambitions. Its home ad- 
ministration seemed disinclined to take the advice of 
men experienced at the front in the choice of per- 
sonnel. A novelist, a college professor, a lawyer, 
or even a regular " Y " secretary is not as good at 
running a lunch counter or a hut as a man who regu- 
larly runs a lunch counter or a hotel. A young 
woman who stood high at college might not be as 
useful in the kind of work the " Y " had to do as 
a practical housewife who might not have heard of 



5 o6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Euclid, but who did know how to bake, sew, and 
cook. The soldier judged personnel by the way they 
came down to earth, as he had a very earthly job 
in his fox-holes and charges. I have gone into this 
detail because it became the fashion to give the " Y " 
a bad name, which was hardly deserved considering 
the large contract it had undertaken to fill. 

The Knights of Columbus also had huts and thea- 
ters, but did not attempt to cover the whole field. 
When K. of C. workers opened a counter or ap- 
peared with a truck at the front, the supplies while 
they lasted were free to all comers. The soldier 
who had no change was always looking for the 
K. of C. When he passed the " Y," which required 
money for the sweets or the tobacco he craved, the 
contrast in his mind was that between generosity and 
commercialism. He was allotting a large portion 
of his pay to his family in a time of war, when 
according to all he read everybody at home was 
subscribing liberally in order that the men who faced 
hardship and death might not go without comforts. 
As the K. of C. appeared in force with the army 
later than the " Y " and could profit by example, 
its workers were seemingly a little more practical 
than those of the " Y." 

" Boys, we'll give you all we have. Never mind 
the money ! " was their attitude. The Jewish Wel- 
fare Board seems to have been admirably fore- 



THEY ALSO SERVED 507 

handed and generous in its special attention to the 
soldiers of the Jewish race. 

We must not overlook the American Library As- 
sociation, which had a free library in Paris. It cir- 
culated books throughout the army zone by a system 
which enabled the reader, if he were traveling, to 
return a book to any "Y" hut. If a book were 
lost, no matter. The thing was that our fighters 
should be served. 

The Red Cross, having elaborate headquarters in 
Paris, was an enormous organization, managed with 
able statecraft, which covered a broad field of various 
activity. Its duties with the army never seemed as 
specific as those of the other auxiliaries. The old 
established Samaritan of our modern world, with 
immense funds and resources ready to meet any 
emergency when the call came, it opened free dis- 
pensaries and succored refugees; assisted civil pop- 
ulations as well as soldiers; ran some auxiliary hos- 
pitals, convalescent hotels, and hotels for officers; 
never selling, always giving, supplied hot coffee and 
lunches to soldiers en route across France; and 
" filled in " on a huge scale in the same way as the 
Salvation Army on a smaller scale. More of its 
workers were well-to-do and unpaid than in the K. 
of C. and the Y. M. C. A. Some of these — for the 
A. R. C, too, had its difficulties with personnel — ■ 
were far more expensive, the practical comrades said,, 



508 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

than if they had received large salaries. The Red 
Cross doctors and nurses were ready to supplement 
the regular army forces when occasion demanded. 

The popular idea that the Red Cross had anything 
to do with bringing in the wounded from the field, 
or with the dressing stations or ambulances, was quite 
erroneous. All the doctors and medical men in the 
front line, and all the stretcher-bearers who endured 
their share of gas, shells, and machine-gun blasts, 
of rains and mud, with heavy casualties; all the 
drivers of the ambulances along shell-infested roads; 
all the hospital corps men, on their feet twenty- 
four hours at a stretch at the triages; all the teams 
of surgeons and their helpers, whose skill and tire- 
less endurance saved lives — these were of the army. 

There is no heroism finer than that of the stretcher- 
bearer; or of the surgeon and medical corps man 
in the front line. Their blood is not hot in pursuit 
or combat. They see the red bandages and gaping 
wounds, and hear the gasps for breath of the dying. 
Your medical corps man " took on for the war " ; 
he was of the army machine. The work of our 
doctors is attested by the record of how successfully 
they patched up the wounded to return to the battle ; 
of how they kept the stream of wounded flowing 
back to the hospitals in amazing smoothness, con- 
sidering the unexpected demands of the battle. 

There were not enough medical officers, hospital 



THEY ALSO SERVED 509 

corps men, or nurses; but they made up for their 
lack of numbers under the most appealing of calls 
by giving the limit of their strength, no less than 
the soldiers. The honors to the womanhood which 
served in France go to our trained nurses in the 
army service. They did not report to a Paris head- 
quarters when they arrived from home, but were 
hurried to their destinations on army travel orders; 
they knew none of the diversions of working in can- 
teens or of automobile rides about the front. For 
weeks on end they were restricted to hospital areas; 
they were soldiers under army discipline, in every 
sense of the word. They had not only kindness in 
their hearts, but they knew how to be kind; they 
not only wanted to do, but knew how to do. 

How their competency shone beside the frittering 
superficiality of volunteers who had not even been 
taught by their mothers to sew, or cook, or look mis- 
ery in any form in the face, but who felt that they 
must reach France in some way in order to help, or 
rather to be helped! It was the difference between 
the sturdy workhorse drawing a load upgrade, and 
a rosette of ribbons on the bridle ; between the cloth 
that keeps out the cold, and the flounce on the skirt; 
between knowing how to bathe a sick man, put a 
fresh bandage on his wound, move him orently, and 
what to sav to cheer him; and knowing how to take 
a chocolate out of a box daintily. There was no 



510 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

time for ribbons or flounces during our greatest 
battle. We rarely had candy from the commissary, 
which fact however did require self-abnegation on 
the part of a few of the least serviceable of auxiliary 
workers, which might lead them to think that they 
were doing their bit. 

Hollow-eyed nurses, driving into bodies aching 
with fatigue no less energy of will than the exhausted 
battalions in their charges, kept the faith with smiles, 
which were their camouflage for cheeks pale from 
want of sleep. They often worked double the time 
that they would in hospitals at home, where they 
had their home comforts and diversions. When a 
soldier, with drawn, ashen face from loss of blood, 
reeking still with the grime of the battlefield, came 
into a ward, an American woman, who knew his 
ways and his tongue, was waiting to attend upon 
such cases as his. When he was bathed and shaved 
and his wound dressed, and he lay back glowing in 
cleanliness on his cot, his gratitude gave the nurse 
renewed strength. 

After I had returned home, I heard one day on 
an elevated train a young woman telling, in radiant 
importance, of her " wonderful experience " as an 
auxiliary worker of the type to which I have re- 
ferred, and of all the officers she had met. Seated 
near her were two nurses in uniform, furtively 
watching her between glances at each other. There 



THEY ALSO SERVED 511 

were lines in their faces, though not in hers — lines 
left by their service. What she was saying went 
very well with her friends, but not with us who know 
something of who won the war in France. Many 
of these nurses — working double shifts in a calling 
which is short-lived for those who pursue it for any 
length of time — will not recover from the strain on 
mind and body of the generous giving of the only 
capital that most of them had. If you were not in 
France — in case you were and were wounded, you 
need no reminder — when you meet a woman who 
was in France, ask if she were an army nurse. If 
she says that she was, then you may have met a per- 
son who deserves to outrank some gentlemen I know 
who have stars on their shoulders. 

Then there were the chaplains. General Pershing 
had his own ideas on the subject. The chaplain was 
simply to be the man of God, the ministrant of re- 
ligion, the moral companion without regard to theo- 
logical faith, who might show, under fire, his greater 
faith in the souls of men fighting for a cause. 

Bishop Brent, the chief chaplain, was not a mili- 
tant churchman, but a man of the gospel militant; 
and so was Father Doherty, on his right hand, 
and all the other chiefs. You ceased to ask whether 
a man was Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or Metho- 
dist, Christian or Jewish. Clergymen at home might 
wonder about this, but they would not after they 



512 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

had served for a while as our chaplains served, close 
to the blood-stained gas-saturated earth, with the 
eternal mystery of the sky overhead. The chief 
chaplains were hard disciplinarians. The punish- 
ment which they meted out to one chaplain who 
strayed from the straight and narrow path was not 
comprised in army regulations. " Wasn't he a 
chaplain?" the chaplains argued. Hardest of all 
on him were the men of his own church. He had 
disgraced his church as well as his fellows. 

Yet despite the chaplains the men developed the 
habit of swearing; soldiers always have. War re- 
quires emphatic expressions. It destroys flexibility 
of expression — and " damn " and " hell " do seem 
the fittest description of a soldier's occupation. 

" It's an innocent kind of swearing, though," said 
a chaplain. " It does not really blaspheme. It may 
help them in fighting the battle of the Lord against 
the German." 

In the assignment of chaplains, of course, the plan 
was to place a Catholic with a regiment which was 
preponderantly Catholic; a Protestant with a regi- 
ment that was preponderantly Protestant; a rabbi 
with a regiment that had many Jews. When it 
was reported that the majority of the men of a cer- 
tain regiment were not of the same church as their 
chaplain, a transfer was recommended. The colonel 
wanted to keep his chaplain, and suggested that 



THEY ALSO SERVED 513 

he put the question to a vote, which he did: with 
the result that all the men of the regiment declared 
themselves of the same faith as their chaplain. This 
chaplain's religion, as it worked out in the daily as- 
sociation of the drudgery of drill and the savage 
ruck of battle, was quite good enough for them, 
without regard to the theological label he bore. He 
had faith, simply faith, and he gave them faith 
through his own work. 

Division commanders who were not religious men, 
but hard-hitting fighters, thinking only of battle ef- 
ficiency, used always to be asking for more chap- 
lains. I recollect during the Meuse-Argonne battle 
a division commander exclaiming: "Why don't we 
get more chaplain replacements? I'm right up 
against it in my division. I've had one killed and one 
wounded in the last two days. I'm going to recom- 
mend both for the Cross, but there's nobody come 
to take their places. You stir them up on this ques- 
tion at Headquarters." 

The chaplain stoutened the hearts of the fighters 
against hardship, cheered the wounded, administered 
to the dying, wrote letters home to relatives, went 
over the fields after the battle with the men of the 
Graves Registration Service, which had the pitiful 
and reverent task of gathering and burying the dead. 

Our soldiers who knew religion at home as re- 
peating " Now I lay me down " in childhood and 



5H OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the Lord's Prayer when they were older, as grace 
before meals, going to Sunday school, sitting in pews 
listening to sermons, and as calls from the clergy- 
man, now knew it as the infinite in their souls in 
face of death, exemplified by the man of God who 
was wearing the uniform they wore, who was suffer- 
ing what they suffered, who kept faith with the old 
thought that " the blood of the martyr is the seed 
of the church." 



XXX 

THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 

No thought of peace at Souilly — The third attack — The Rainbow 
Division before Chatillon ridge — Three days of confused com- 
bat — Over the ridge — The Arrows sweep through Romagne — 
Outflanking the Dame Marie ridge — The new Ace of Dia- 
monds Division — In and out — A corridor of fire — Knitting 
through the Pultiere Wood — A fumble in the Rappes Wood— 
Which is finally " riveted " — The long-enduring Marne Divi- 
sion — Knits further progress. 

On the late afternoon of October 13th I happened 
to be in the stuffy little ante-room at Souilly, when, 
his great figure filling the doorway, Liggett came 
out from a conference with Pershing. His face was 
glowing, his eyes were sparkling as if he had seen a 
vision come true. We were planning to have four 
million men in France in the summer of 19 19. Its 
new commander might think of his First Army, 
after three weeks of battle in the Meuse-Argonne, 
as only the nucleus of our growing strength. 

A few minutes after he had left the ante-room 
General Pershing's aide received an item of news 
over the telephone from Paris. This announced that 
the Germans had provisionally accepted President 
Wilson's Fourteen Points. Thought turned from 

5*5 



Si6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

our own to other battlefields. Austria had prac- 
tically thrown up her hands. Turkey was isolated 
and demoralized. Bulgaria had surrendered; the 
Serbs and Allied troops were marching to Belgrade; 
the Belgians were at the gates of Bruges, the British 
four days later were to enter Lille, and the French 
had taken Laon in the sweep across the open coun- 
try. Was the end in sight? So long and so stub- 
bornly had the German armies held out, so habitual 
had war became, that we who were close to the front 
saw vaguely as yet the handwriting on the wall which 
was so distinct to the German command. We knew 
that the Germans had many times dallied with peace 
proposals in the hope of weakening Allied morale. 
When I went in to see General Pershing, he 
turned to his big map on the wall, and ran his finger 
over the Romagne positions. " Liggett is losing no 
time. He's attacking tomorrow," he said. After 
he had referred to the plan, he fell to talking of the 
young reserve officers, their courage, the rapidity 
with which they had learned their lessons, of the 
fortitude and initiative of the men, who produced 
leaders among themselves when their officers fell in 
action. He had had to drive them very hard; this 
was the only way to hasten the end of the war. His 
voice trembled and his eyes grew moist as he dwelt 
on the sacrifice of life. For the moment he was not 
a commander under control of an iron purpose, but 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 517 

an individual allowing himself an individual's emo- 
tion. Then his aide came in and laid a little slip 
of paper on his desk, remarking that it contained the 
news of the German acceptance. I asked the general 
what he thought of the chance of peace. 

" I know nothing about it," he said. " Our busi- 
ness is to go on fighting until I receive orders to 
cease fire. We must have no other thought, as 
soldiers." 

The only negotiations in his province and in that 
of the Allied armies were of the kind they had been 
using for four years : the kind which had brought the 
Germans to their present state of mind. The pros- 
pect of peace should make us fight all the harder, 
as a further argument for the enemy to yield speed- 
ily. Not until the day of the armistice did our prep- 
arations diminish, at home or in France, for carry- 
ing on the war on an increasing scale of force. 
Throughout October and the first ten days of 
November our cablegrams to Washington continued 
to call for all the material required for four million 
men in the summer of 19 19. Indiscreet as it would 
have been to encourage the enemy by confessing to 
our paucity of numbers and lack of material in the 
summer of 19 17, we might lay all our cards on the 
table in the autumn of 19 18. 

Liggett's attack of October 14th was our last 
effort which could be called a general attack before 



518 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the final drive beginning November ist, which broke 
the German line. The general attack of September 
26th had broken through the old trench system for 
deep gains; that of October 4th, with the driving 
of two wedges on either side of the whale-back, had 
taken the Aire valley and the gap of Grandpre, and 
brought us up to the Kriemhilde Stellung, or main 
line of resistance of the whale-back; that of October 
14th aimed to drive a wedge on either side of the 
Romagne heights, taking the Kriemhilde, the two 
wedges meeting at Grand Carre farm in their con- 
verging movement to deliver the heights into our 
hands. Thus Army ambition was soaring again. If 
it had succeeded, we should have been up to the 
Freya Stellung, another fragmentary trench system, 
the second and inferior line of resistance of the 
whale-back, and we might not have had to wait 
another two weeks for victory. The progress' of 
the other armies summoned us, as it had at every 
stage of the battle, to a superhuman effort to reach 
the German line of communications, which might 
now mean a complete military disaster for the 
enemy. 

The 32nd was still facing the Cote Dame Marie 
and the town of Romagne in front of the loop in 
the Kriemhilde. On its left was the 42nd, which 
had just relieved the exhausted ist and was to drive 
the western wedge through the trench system of the 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 519 

Chatillon ridge and on through the Romagne Wood 
and the large Bantheville Wood. 

I have written so much in my first book about the 
42nd, in its Baccarat sector, in its " stone-walling " 
against the fifth German offensive, in the Chateau- 
Thierry counter-offensive, that it seems necessary to 
say only that it was the Rainbow Division, the sec- 
ond of National Guard divisions to arrive in France, 
which had shown such mettle, immediately it wa& 
sent to the trenches, that it was given every test 
which a toughened division might be asked to un- 
dergo. Major-General Charles T. Menoher, who 
had been in command throughout its battle service, 
had the poise requisite to handling the infantry regi- 
ments from Alabama, Iowa, New York, and Ohio, 
and all the other units from many States, in their 
proud rivalry. 

The Arrows of the 32nd, from Michigan and 
Wisconsin, now on the Rainbows' right, had been 
on their right when both divisions crossed the Ourcq, 
and stormed the heights with a courage that disre- 
garded appalling casualties. Neither the 42nd nor 
the 32nd would admit that it had any equals among 
National Guard divisions. After their weeks of 
fighting in the Marne region, the Rainbows had come 
out with staggeringly numerous gaps in their ranks, 
as a result of their victory, which had been filled by 
replacements who were not even now fully trained. 



520 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

They had been in line for the Saint-Mihiel attack, 
but were brought to the Argonne to be ready in re- 
serve when a veteran division should be required for 
a vital thrust. No sooner had they gone into line 
than they found that the enemy, taking a lesson from 
the success of the ist and the 32nd and the 3rd, 
which had entered the Kriemhilde, had been improv- 
ing his Kriemhilde line, concentrating more artillery 
and establishing machine-gun posts to cover any 
points where experience had developed weakness. 
The Kriemhilde had thus far resisted all our attacks. 
It combined many of the defensive advantages of 
the old trench system with the latest methods of open 
war defense upon chosen and very formidable 
ground. The 42nd was to storm one of its key 
points, the Chatillon ridge. 

Will any officer or man of the division forget the 
days of October 14th, 15th, and 16th? At the very 
start they were at close quarters, their units inter- 
mingling with the Germans in rush and counter-rush, 
in the midst of machine-gun nests, trenches, and wire 
entanglements, where man met man in a free-for-all 
grapple to the death. The rains were at their worst. 
Every fighter was sopping wet. It was impossible 
to know where units were in that fiendish battle 
royal, isolated by curtains of fire. 

Summerall was now in command of the Fifth 
ICorps. " Per schedule " and " go through " Sum- 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 521 

merall, who had driven a human wedge as a division 
commander, was to drive another as a corps com- 
mander. His restless personal observation kept 
touch with the work of brigade and regiment; his 
iron will was never more determined. 

The 42nd did not keep to the impossible objective 
beyond, but it did " go through * the formidable 
Kriemhilde, which had been our nightmare for three 
weeks, in one of the most terrifically concentrated 
actions of the battle. There was hard-won progress 
on the first day on the bloody slopes of Hill 288, 
while patrols, pushing ahead, found themselves 
under cross-fire which could not be withstood. When 
night came, the units in front were already exhausted 
in a day of fighting of the most wearing kind. " At- 
tack again ! " Wire which was not on artillery maps, 
swept by machine-gun fire, meant delay, but no re- 
pulse. The German resistance was unusually brave 
and skillful in making the most of positions as vital 
and well-prepared as they were naturally strong. 
The right, its units rushing here and crawling there 
to avoid the blasts of machine-gun fire, had put Hill 
242 and Hill 288 well behind it on the second day, 
and had reached the gassed Romagne Wood. The 
center was held up on the slippery and tricky ascents 
of the Chatillon ridge, where the German machine- 
gunners stood until they were killed or so badly 
wounded that they could not serve their guns; and 



522 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the German infantry, literally in a fortress strong- 
hold, became more desperate with every hour 
throughout the afternoon, while dusk found the shiv- 
ering and tenacious Rainbows dug into the. sodden 
earth and holding their ground. Shattered units 
were reorganized, and fresh units sent forward for 
the attack of the next day, which took the ridge. 
The Kriemhilde Stellung was won. 

Those three days had been more horrible than 
even the Rainbows had known: days which have 
either to be told in infinite detail, or expressed as a 
savage wrestle for mastery. Few prisoners might 
be taken in such confused fighting, when the Ger- 
mans stuck to the last to their fox-holes and their 
fragments of trenches. The path of the advance 
was strewn with German dead. Army ambition had 
gained much, if not its extreme goal. It had a jump- 
ing-off place for a final and decisive general attack. 
There remained nothing further for the 42nd dur- 
ing the next two weeks except to make sure that its 
gains were not lost. This required constant patrols 
and costly vigils under gas, artillery, and machine- 
gun fire, which were very wearing. On October 30th 
the division was relieved by the 2nd, which passed 
through it for the great advance of November 1st. 
The 42nd had suffered 2,895 casualties in this opera- 
tion. It could retire after its victory, in full confi- 
dence that it had kept faith with the high expecta- 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 523 

tions of its future from the day of its organization. 
It had brought great honor to itself as a division, 
to the whole National Guard, and to the replace- 
ment officers and men who had served in it. 

The 32nd's attack on October 14th was of course 
intimately connected with that of the 42nd. Having 
assisted the 1st to drive the wedge over the wall of 
the Aire, the Arrows had still enough vitality left 
to carry out their eager desire to complete the con- 
quest of the section of the Kriemhilde on their front. 
They knew that they had a hard nut to crack, and 
they began its cracking by turning all the power of 
their artillery on to the German positions from noon 
of the 13th until 5.30 on the morning of the 14th, 
when, under as deep a barrage as the tireless artillery 
could make, they started for the entrenchments on 
the Dame Marie ridge, and the town of Romagne. 
Their left struggled up the slopes of the ridge, but 
had to halt and dig in, waiting for more artillery 
preparation to silence the array of machine-guns and 
guns which, despite the eighteen hours of bombard- 
ment, began firing almost as soon as the charge 
began. 

On the right success was more prompt. By noon 
a battalion was past the village which had resisted 
so many attempts to capture it. Knowing Romagne 
of old, the right had executed a clever flanking move- 
ment, under the special protection of a flexible bar- 



524 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

rage, which outwitted the enemy. By 11.30 the 
village was in the hands of the swiftly moving Ar- 
rows, and entirely mopped up. Its name might now 
be inscribed on the division banners with those of 
Fismes and Juvigny. The Germans had arranged 
many bloody traps in the streets, but the men of the 
32nd had taken too many positions from the enemy 
to be fooled by such tricks. 

The left meanwhile was burrowing into the steep 
and slippery sides of the Dame Marie ridge, with a 
blast of machine-gun fire grilling every head that 
showed itself. There are occasions when officer and 
soldier know that the odds are too great against 
them; when they halt and dig, from the same in- 
stinct that makes a man step back from a passing 
train. This was such an occasion. It looked as if 
the ridge could not possibly be taken in front, when 
the men on the extreme flank, quick to press forward 
instantly there was any opening in the wall of fire, 
saw their opportunity. The 42nd, with their first 
onrush halted, had kept on pushing, and they were 
driving the Germans off Hill 288, which had been 
pouring its fire into the ranks of the 32nd men 
facing the Dame Marie. This gave a purchase for 
a tactical stroke, which was improved before the 
German realized that he had fumbled, and could 
retrieve himself. A reserve battalion which was 
hastened forward slipped around to the left of the 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 525 

Dame Marie. With its pressure on the flank, and 
that of the center regiment, which had lost liaison 
on the left but had no thought of stopping while it 
could keep up with the right, the enemy was forced 
completely off the ridge by dark, and the advance 
pressed on into the woods beyond. The Arrows 
had now not only penetrated the Kriemhilde, but 
had gone clear through it. Too much gold can not 
be used in State capitals in inscribing the Dame 
Marie beside the heights of the Ourcq to glorify 
the deeds of the 32nd for the admiration of future 
generations. Despite its two weeks' hard service, 
it was to remain in line, — or rather to continue ad- 
vancing for four days longer, as it grappled with 
the machine-gun nests in Bantheville Wood. 

On the night of the i9th-20th it was relieved by 
the 89th. All the survivors among numerous re- 
placements which it had received after Juvigny could 
claim to belong to that fraternity of veterans, which, 
from the hour they marched down the apron of the 
Ourcq in parade formation in the face of the enemy's 
guns, had shown the qualities which make armies 
unconquerable. No division ever stuck to its knit- 
ting more consistently, or had been readier to take 
the brunt of any action. Its part in the Meuse- 
Argonne battle had been vital and prolonged. The 
number of its prisoners, all taken in small groups 
in desperate fighting, was 1,095, its casualties were 



526 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

5,019, and it had identified the elements of nine 
German divisions on its front. 

On its right in the attack of October 14th a divi- 
sion new to the great battle had come into line — the 
regular 5th, under command of Major-General John 
E. McMahon. Its emblem was the ace of diamonds. 
The 5th was just as regular as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 
4th, and it had no inkling of a doubt that it could 
prove as ably as the other four that it was the 
" best " regular division. As a basis for its confi- 
dence was its record in Lorraine, where it had prep- 
aration for a larger role in its faultless taking of the 
village of Frapelle, when for the first time in two 
years the Vosges mountains had resounded with the 
bombardment of an offensive action. Officers and 
men had been thoroughly drilled. Uniformity had 
not suffered from the injection of inexperienced re- 
placements. The 5th had both the ardor of the 
fresh divisions which had gone in on September 26th 
without having previously been under fire, and long 
trench service, which made the Aces the more eager 
to be in the " big show." 

The command took them at their own estimate 
in a characteristic — an aggravatedly characteristic — 
fashion. If ever a division were warranted in losing 
heart on the ground that their superiors were " not 
playing the game " with them, it was the 5 th, which 
was submitted to everything in the way of changing 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 527 

orders that is ruinous to morale. It was moved 
about without any regard to the chessboard rules 
of war. Doubtless this was necessary; but it was 
hard on the 5th, though it was only to confirm other 
people, including the Germans, in the opinion that 
the 5 th was a great division. 

On the night of October nth-i2th a brigade of 
the 5th was ordered to take over the line of the 80th 
and a part of the line of the 4th. The sector was on 
the Cunel-Brieulles road, where the 80th had been 
checked, and under the flanking fire of the galleries 
of guns, on the right from east of the Meuse, on the 
left from the whale-back, as well as in front, which 
I have described fully in my account of the 4th divi- 
sion. Relief was not completed until after daylight, 
at 6.30 in the morning. Patrols were sent forward 
into the Pultiere Wood when word came that the 
Germans were massing for a counter-attack. The 
5th was preparing to receive them, and establishing 
itself in its sector, when orders came that it was to 
withdraw. Nothing irritates a soldier of spirit 
more than to be sent into position for action, and 
then to turn his back upon the enemy. Withdraw ! 
The aces of diamonds to withdraw ! They were will- 
ing to play the game, but they were filled with dis- 
gust at such an order. After long marches from 
the rear, after spending the whole night in effecting 
a most difficult relief under continuous fire, after a 



528 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

day full of annoyances in organizing an uncertain 
line swept by shell-bursts, they were to march back 
through the night in the gamut of the enemy artil- 
lery, which became increasingly active in evident 
knowledge of their exposure. Units had as much 
reason for becoming confused as they would have 
in a night attack. 

Disheartened at having to retreat — for that was 
the word for the maneuver — some showed less 
alacrity than in going to the front, while the filtering 
process of withdrawal under the cross-fire was bound 
to separate men from their commands. The lan- 
guage they used of course was against the German 
artillery, not against high commanders. A part of 
the relief had to be carried out in broad daylight in 
sight of the German artillery observers; indeed, it 
was not finished until noon. Without having made 
a single charge, the brigade had been exhausted and 
suffered many casualties. 

The change of plan considered using the 5th as a 
fresh division, which it would not long remain if this 
kind of maneuvering were continued. Army ambi- 
tion had decided that it was to be the eastern wedge 
in the converging attack to Grand Carre farm, 
of which the 42nd was to be the western. Hence 
a change of sectors for the 5th, which, after march- 
ing into hell's jaws and out again, was to be " side- 
slipped " into the sector of the amazingly tenacious 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 529 

3rd, which, though it might well be considered " ex- 
pended " by its severe casualties and long exertions, 
was to take over the wicked sector from which the 
5th had been withdrawn. " Side-slipping " was al- 
most as common and hateful a word in the battle as 
liaison. Consider a battalion as a bit of paper fas- 
tened by a pin to a map, and moving it right or left 
was a simple matter; but moving men under shell- 
and machine-gun fire, in the darkness, from one series 
of fox-holes to another with which they were not 
familiar, you may be assured on the word of any 
soldier, who lost a night's sleep, while soaked to 
the skin by the chill rain, and had his comrades 
killed in the process, was anything but a simple 
matter. 

Naturally the three divisions, the 5th, 32nd, and 
42nd, were interdependent for success in this con- 
verging attack. As the veterans of the 42nd, doing 
all that veterans could do, were three days in taking 
the Chatillon ridge, and the regulars of the 5th 
could not bring to life their dead in the Rappes 
Wood to continue charging, either division had an- 
other reason than the unconquerable resistance on 
its own front for not keeping the schedule of high 
ambition. 

According to the original plan, the Aces of the 
5th, passing through the 3rd, were to advance across 
open ground in a corridor between the artillery fire 



530 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of the Romagne heights and the flanking machine- 
gun nests of the Pultiere and Rappes Woods, over 
which flanking artillery fire would pass from the 
heights east of the Meuse. The 5th's commander 
was to change the plan — another change with addi- 
tional maneuvers, though a wise one — by attacking 
the Pultiere Wood, which would save the Aces from 
some flanking machine-gun fire on the right. 

It should have been no surprise, after the com- 
motion due to the "side-slipping," double reliefs, 
and counter-marching, that the enemy knew that an 
attack was coming. Only if he had lost all tactical 
sense would he have failed to foresee its nature. He 
was ready with all his galleries of guns, and with 
his machine-gunes regrouped to meet the emergency, 
when the wave of the 5th, including troops which 
had been up two nights in making a relief, being 
relieved, and taking over again, began the attack, 
under insufficient artillery support, in all the ardor 
of their first charge in the great battle. 

Our barrage had not silenced the machine-gun 
nests, which began firing immediately. The enemy's 
ample artillery shelled our echelons in support, caus- 
ing losses and a certain amount of inevitable con- 
fusion, as they were forced to take cover and deploy. 
It also laid down a barrage in front of our first 
wave ; but the Aces passed through the swath of the 
bursts in steady progress up the bare slopes under 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 531 

increasing machine-gun fire, and reached the crests 
of Hills 260 and 271. There they were exposed 
to all the guns of the galleries, and to machine-gun 
fire from the direction of Bantheville in front, from 
Romagne on the left, and the Pultiere and Rappes 
woods on the right. To pass over the crest and 
down the slopes into the valley beyond was literally 
to open their arms to receive the bullets and shells. 
What use was it for the 5th's batteries to face around 
due east from the line of attack toward the enemy 
batteries behind the Borne de Cornouiller, which 
were out of their reach? 

The Pultiere, the southern of the two woods, was 
about half the size of the Rappes, which was a mile 
long and separated from it by a narrow open space. 
The ground was uneven, sloping upward to hills 
which made the defense of their depths the easier. 
Our exploiting force sent into the Pultiere to protect 
the flank of the main advance had not been strong 
enough for its purpose. After passing through 
flanking fire from the direction of Cunel, it was 
checked in the woods by the machine-guns concealed 
in the thickets, which also gave cover for machine- 
guns firing not only into the flank but into the right 
rear of the main advance. The next step was to 
take the Pultiere by a concentrated attack during the 
afternoon, which drove forward until we had dug in 
face to face with the remaining machine-gunners in 



532 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

an irregularity of line which was always the result 
of determined units fighting machine-gun nests in a 
forest. The Aces who had won this much, their 
fighting blood fully aroused, proceeded to carry out 
their mission the next day, the 15th, of further re- 
lieving the flank of the advance on the hills, which 
was being sorely punished as it held to its gains under 
storms of shells. 

Now imperishable valor was to lead to a tragedy 
of misunderstanding. On through the northern edge 
of Pultiere Wood, across the open space between the 
two woods in face of the machine-gun fire from the 
edge of the Rappes Wood, then through the dense 
growth of the Rappes, infiltrating around machine- 
gun nests, and springing upon their gunners in sur- 
prise, again charging them full tilt in front, passing 
by many which were " playing possum," these Aces 
of American infantrymen, numbers thinning from 
death and wounds, but having no thought except to 
" get there," kept on until a handful of survivors 
reached the northern edge of the Rappes. This 
was their destination. They had gone where they 
were told to go. They dug in among the tree roots 
in the inky darkness, without the remotest idea of 
falling back, as they waited for support to come. 

Now on the morning of that day, the 15th — after 
casualties had been streaming back all night under 
shell-fire from the bare hills which were being reso- 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 533 

lutely held with rapidly diminishing numbers, — it 
was found that the total remaining effectives of three 
regiments were only eleven hundred men, a hundred 
more than one battalion. Having asked the Corps 
for reserves, the division commander had attacked 
for the Rappes Wood as we have seen. The reports 
that came in to Division Headquarters from the 
morning's effort showed that we were making little 
progress in the wood, and were having very hard 
fighting still in the Pultiere. The brigade com- 
mander ordered another attack on Rappes for the 
afternoon. This the division commander counter- 
manded. In view of lack of support on his flank, 
the continuing drain of casualties and the situation 
of the division as a whole, he felt warranted in 
indicating that any units which might have made 
an entry into Rappes withdraw to the Pultiere. 
The next morning patrols which reached the men 
who were in the northern edge of Rappes passed on 
the word that they were to fall back. The gallant 
little band, surrounded by German snipers, had not 
been able to send back any message. Weren't they 
of the 5th? Hadn't they been told to " go through '* 
the wood? Was it not the regulation in the 5th to 
obey orders ? Withdraw ! Very well ; this was or- 
ders, too. From their fox-holes where, so far at 
least, they had held their own in a sniping contest 
with the enemy, they retraced their steps over the 



S34 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ground they had won past the bodies of their dead 
comrades. Before Division Headquarters knew of 
their success, the evacuation of Rappes was com- 
pleted. 

The night of the 16th the total rifle strength of 
the division was reported as 3,316, or a little more 
than one-fourth of normal. On the 17th Major- 
General Hanson E. Ely took command of the 5th. 
He was of the school of the 1st, long in France; a 
blue-eyed man of massive physique, who met all 
situations smilingly and with a firm jaw. The 
Pultiere Wood was definitely mopped up during 
the day. 

The brigade which had been in the 3rd Division's 
Sector and suffered the most casualties and exhaus- 
tion was relieved. At least the 5th, weakened as it 
jvas by a battle in which the Aces fought as if they 
§vere the whole pack of cards, must hold the Pultiere, 
#nd Hills 260 and 271. On the night of the 16th- 
57th the divisional engineers did a remarkable piece 
£>f work, even for engineers. They brought up under 
shell-fire and gas, and laid under shell- and machine- 
gun fire, two thousand yards of double wire to pro- 
tect the tired infantry, which was busily digging in, 
against counter-attacks. 

By this time, of course, the prospect of taking 
Crrand Carre farm by the converging movement 
seemed out of the question. The farm was more 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE $3$ 

than a mile beyond Bantheville, which was nearly a 
mile beyond the southern edge of the Rappes Wood. 
But when the 32nd reported progress in the Banthe- 
ville Wood on the 18th, and its patrols had seen no 
one in Bantheville, the 5th was sent to the attack 
again. Its patrols, which reached the edge of the 
town, found it well populated with machine-gunners, 
who might have only recently arrived. As for the 
Rappes Wood, all the cunning and daring we could 
exert in infiltration could take us only four hundred 
yards into its depths, where the Germans had bees 
forewarned to preparedness by their previous expe- 
rience. 

On the 19th the 5th held fast under the welter of 
shell-fire from the heights and across the Meuse r 
while General Ely straightened out his organization^ 
and applied remedies for a better liaison between the 
artillery and the infantry. On the 20th, the idea of 
" pushing " still dominant, under a heavy barrage 
the 5th concentrated all its available numbers of ex- 
hausted men in a hastily formed plan for another 
attempt for the Rappes Wood. It made some two 
hundred yards' progress against the sprays of bul- 
lets ripping through the thickets. The 5 th was " ex- 
pended " in vitality and numbers after these grueling 
six days ; but it was not to give up while the Germans 
were in the Rappes Wood. The Aces made swift 
work of its taking on the next day. Their artillery 



536 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

and that of the 3rd on their left gave the men a 
good rolling barrage. The enemy artillery replied 
in a storm immediately; but the Aces, assisted by 
the men of the 3rd Division attacking from their 
side, drove through the shell-fire and all the machine- 
gun nests with what one of the men called a " four 
of a kind " sweep. At 5 p.m. the reports said that 
the wood was not only occupied but " riveted." At 
6 p.m. the enemy answered this success with a 
counter-attack, which the 5th's artillery met, in three 
minutes after it had started, with a barrage which 
was its undoing. Having consolidated Rappes and 
avenged the pioneers who had first traversed it, the 
5th was now relieved by the 90th, and sent to corps 
reserve. The exposure had brought on much sick- 
ness, which increased the gaps due to casualties. Ab- 
sorbing three thousand replacements, General Ely, 
reflecting in his personality the spirit of his men, was 
now to prepare them for their brilliant part in the 
drive of November 1st. 

The 3rd Division, on the right of the 5th, had 
had of course to submit to the same annoyance of 
" side-slipping " as the 5th in the interchange of 
sectors. Having assisted in driving one of the 
wedges of October 4th, it was now to continue under 
the shell-fire from the neighborhood of the Borne 
de Cornouiller across the Meuse in forcing its way 
still farther. It made slow and difficult progress in 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 537 

the eastern edge of the Pultiere Wood and the Foret 
Wood on the 14th, and, the division sector being 
swung east, as the 5th, in turn dependent upon the 
other divisions, had a misfortune in the Rappes 
Wood, not even the dependable infantry of the 3rd 
could make headway under flanking fire against the 
Clairs Chenes Wood and Hill 299. 

On the 1 6th Brigadier-General Preston Brown, 
one of the younger brigadiers, a well-known Leaven- 
worth man who had been chief of staff of the 2nd 
Division in its stand on the Paris-Chateau-Thierry 
road, took command of the 3rd. His appointment 
was significant of how youth will always be served 
under the test of war. On the 17th nothing was ex- 
pected of the division by the Corps; on the 18th it 
advanced in liaison with the 5th in the attack on the 
Rappes Wood, which only partially succeeded. Now 
that tough and dependable 3rd took over the front 
of the 4th Division, which had been in since Septem- 
ber 26th, and with all four regiments in line its front 
reached to the bank of the Meuse from Cunel. 

On the 20th, the day that the 5th was to take 
Rappes, General Brown now having made his prep- 
arations, the 3rd went for Clairs Chenes Wood and 
Hill 299 in deadly earnest, which meant that some- 
thing would have to " break." It was characteristic 
of the handicaps under which every division labored 
that in crossing the open spaces on their way to 



538 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Clairs Chenes the 3rd had flanking machine-gun fire 
from the machine-guns in the Rappes Wood, which 
had not yet been taken. The 3rd took Clairs Chenes, 
but the flanking movement planned for the taking 
of 299 could not go through. The next day General 
Brown converged two attacks upon 299 and 297. 
Two of the highest hills in the region, which had 
long been a vantage point for observers, were won, 
and the 3rd's line straightened out with veteran pre- 
cision. 

The 3rd had been going too fast these last two 
days to suit the enemy's plans of defense. He con- 
centrated his artillery in a violent bombardment on 
Clairs Chenes, and under a barrage worthy of Ger- 
man gunners in their most prodigal days the German 
infantry, in one of those spasmodic counter-attacks 
which showed all their former spirit, forced our 
machine-gunners and engineers to withdraw. A regi- 
mental commander repeated an incident of the 3rd's 
defense of Mezy and the railroad track along the 
Marne, when he gathered runners and all the men 
he could find in the vicinity, and led them in a charge 
which drove the Germans out of the wood, and 
reestablished the line. The Germans found what 
compensation they could by pounding Hill 299 all 
night with their guns ; but that hill was too high and 
too valuable to be yielded by such stalwart depend- 
ables as the men of the 3rd. During the next five 



THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE 539 

days, while our whole line was preparing for the 
drive of November 1st, the 3rd's active patrols even 
entered the village of Brieulles on the river bank, 
which for over four weeks had been a sore point 
with us; but they were told that it was too danger- 
ous a position to hold, and withdrew. 

On the night of the 26th the 3rd was relieved by 
the 5th, now recuperated. It was a pity that the 3rd, 
after its wonderful record in the battle, could not 
have participated in the sweep of our battalions 
down the far slopes of the whale-back. In line 
since October 1st, four weeks lacking two days, it 
had paid a price for taking the Mamelle trench, and 
for all its enduring, skillful attacks under that dia- 
bolical cross-fire from the galleries of heights. Its 
casualties, 8,422, were more than half its infantry, 
and, taken in connection with the positions it gained 
and its length of service, are an all-sufficient tribute 
to its character. 



XXXI 

A CITADEL AND A BOWL 

Hopeless stabbing at the flanks — The Lightning Division at 
Grandpre — Vertical warfare — Scaling walls to the citadel — 
Stumbling toward Loges Wood — The All-Americas still doing 
their part — A bowl east of the Meuse — Approached through 
Death Valley — The Blue and Greys crawling toward the 
rim — The rough end of the stick for the Yankee Division — 
Belleau Wood a key point — General Edwards and the staff — 
Desperate grappling. 

The enemy must make sure of holding our left in 
front of Grandpre gap, or we would swing toward 
the whale-back from that direction ; he must not lose 
the heights east of the Meuse, or we would cut off 
his line of retreat across the river. This naturally 
called for violent pressure on his flanks in order to 
draw forces from his center, where we were going 
through the Kriemhilde Stellung. During the third 
week of October there was just as intense fighting 
for the " citadel " of Grandpre and for the heights 
east of the Meuse as for Chatillon and Dame Marie 
ridges, and for the Loges and the Ormont woods 
as for the Bantheville, Clairs Chenes, Rappes, and 
Pultiere woods. 

540 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 541 

We shall first tell the story of our left, where the 
78th Division not only drew the arrows to its breast 
but charged them in their flight, after, as we have 
seen in Chapter XVIII, the 77th, on the 14th and 
15th, had accompanied the general attack in fighting 
to master the northern bank of the Aire. Sacrifice 
is the only word for the 78th's action. Without ex- 
pecting that the division could gain ground, the Army 
command set it the thankless task of repeated at- 
tacks to consume the enemy's strength, which it car- 
ried out with superb ardor and fortitude. 

The 78th, originally drawn from New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and parts of New York State, took its 
name of the " Lightning " Division from an obvious 
local source. Under Major-General James H. 
McRae, a skillful and modest commander, both in its 
training at the British front and in its occupation of 
the Limey sector north of Toul, where it made re- 
markably successful raids, it had shown that 
although it was not one of the best advertised of 
National Army divisions it was one of the most 
promising. Where other new divisions had had their 
first experience in the intoxicating drive for three 
and four miles in the first stage of the battle, the 
78th was to have no open field for its bolts of light- 
ning, but must use them as hammer-heads against 
granite, when it took over from the 77th after the 
latter had made its lodgment in Grandpre. 



542 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Though we had the Aire trough, we were not yet 
through with the westward bend of the Aire river, 
where the bottoms are broad and swampy. A wedge- 
like escarpment projects down to the town of Grand- 
pre from the heights of the Bourgogne Wood. This 
escarpment afforded machine-guns cover for firing 
east and west and into the town. Eastward, high 
ground sloping up from the river bottoms continues 
to the Loges Wood, which averages about three- 
quarters of a mile in breadth and depth, covering 
an eminence. In this sector, about two miles in 
length, the 78th on the river bottom faced command- 
ing positions at every point on its front. To the 
Germans the Bourgogne Wood was a bastion 
against the right flank of the French Fourth Army 
in its movement toward Sedan, a barrier between our 
flank and the French, and the flanking outpost of 
the Loges Wood, as I have indicated, in holding us 
back from swinging northward toward Buzancy and 
cutting into the flank of the whale-back. 

Conditions in the relief of the 77th in the intense 
darkness on the night of the 15th were very mixed. 
Saint-Juvin on the north side of the river, to the 
right or east, was securely held. In Chevieres on 
the south side of the river the Lightnings of the 
78th report that they still had mopping up to. do 
before they crossed. East of Grandpre the Aire has 
two beds, which made the crossing of the river bot- 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 543 

torn under shell- and machine-gun fire the more try- 
ing. In Grandpre the 78th found itself in possession 
of only a section of the town near the river bank on 
the morning of the 16th, and with only small de- 
tachments of troops across the river, — which it must 
cross in force under plunging fire before it reached 
the foot of the slopes. 

It simplifies the action which followed to divide 
it into two parts : the left brigade, operating against 
the Grandpre positions, and the right against the 
Loges Wood positions. I shall describe that of 
Grandpre first. A principal street of the town runs 
up the hill against the western slopes of the escarp- 
ment. Machine-gunners and snipers could go and 
come from the heights into the back doors of the 
houses, and pass upstairs to the front windows, 
whence they could sweep the street with their fire. 
The division knew the escarpment as the " citadel "; 
for this tongue of high ground on its eastward side 
was surmounted by the ruins of ancient buildings, 
with old stone walls which must be scaled, while the 
Saint- Juvin road, which runs past it, is on the edge of 
a swamp. The only way to attack the citadel from 
the town, which it absolutely commanded, was over 
a narrow causeway where a squad of men could not 
properly be deployed. My Lord's castle of olden 
times had an ideal position for holding the villagers 
on the river bank in meek subjection. 



544 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

A vertical warfare ensued in Grandpre, the Ger- 
mans firing downward from upper-story windows 
and the citadel, and the Americans firing upward. 
It took two days of house-to-house fighting, in and 
out of doorways, hugging the house walls, and taking 
house by house, before this town of a thousand inhab- 
itants was cleared of Germans, whose tenacity in 
holding the town itself, when they had the citadel at 
their backs, was indicative enough of the store they 
set by their right flank. On the 19th, the town hav- 
ing been mopped up, and sufficient troops across the 
fords for the purpose, an attack was made on the 
citadel and upon the western slopes of the escarp- 
ment. Beyond the citadel a park extends for a dis- 
tance of a quarter of a mile. Beyond that Talma 
Hill, and Hills 204 and 1 80, and Bellejoyeuse farm 
formed a rampart of heights at the edge of the 
wood. The 78th, wrestling with machine-guns in 
this small area, was to use enough tactical resource 
for a great battle. 

At 2 a.m. the Lightnings began the assault. The 
hour was chosen because darkness favored the plan, 
which must be that of scaling the walls of an ancient 
fortress. Two separate parties made the attempt 
on the walls. The enemy machine-guns from the 
Bourgogne Wood instantly concentrated on one 
party, a target despite the darkness, while a shower 
of bombs was thrown down upon their heads. The 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 545 

other party reached the top, only to be met by irre- 
sistible fire from machine-guns, which the artillery 
had not been able, for a good reason, to silence. 
The guns were dropped into deep dugouts during 
the bombardment, and hoisted by cables to turn on 
the advancing infantry, immediately the bombard- 
ment was over. This care in preparation was an- 
other indication of the value the Germans placed 
on the citadel and the hills at the edge of the wood. 
Under scourging machine-gun fire, the attack every- 
where had to fall back, after severe casualties, ex- 
cept that the right regiment of this brigade took 
the Loges farm, between the Loges Wood and the 
Bourgogne Wood, which it managed to hold by 
skillful digging under cross-fire. 

For the next four days there were the usual 
patrols, while the y8th's artillery hammered the cita- 
del and the hills. On the 23rd a small party, led by 
a lieutenant and three or four men, under a power- 
ful rolling barrage finally scaled the walls of the cita- 
del and rushed on to Bellejoyeuse farm, where they 
had a ferocious struggle with the garrison while wait- 
ing for the second wave of the attack to come to their 
support; but the second wave, having been stopped 
by a curtain of machine-gun and artillery fire, had to 
fall back to the northern edge of the park. The 
gallantry of that little band had not been in vain, 
as was that of the men of the 5 th who went through 



546 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the Rappes Wood. They had the citadel. There 
had been success, too, at another vital point. Talma 
Hill had been taken. The Lightnings on the left 
were having their reward for their arduous sticking 
to it in a warfare which was no longer vertical, 
though still at a great angle of disadvantage. 

Their jumping-off places having been gained, prog- 
ress became more rapid in a series of thrusts. On 
the 25th, one party entered the Bourgogne Wood 
from Talma Hill. There was a gap of half a mile 
between them and the troops in the park. Both 
they and the men in the park held on against the 
worst the enemy's machine-guns and artillery could 
do, while it took two days' persistent fighting by 
other units to conquer machine-gun nests and snipers, 
to close the gap. On the 29th Bellejoyeuse farm 
was taken; Hill 180 beyond it was taken; Hill 204 
had already been stormed with the aid of the 
French. The left brigade of the 78th had finished 
the task. 

The traveler who goes to the Meuse-Argonne 
battlefield, as he follows the road from Grandpre 
on his way up the valley of the sinuous Aire, would 
do well to take a long and thoughtful look at the 
sweep of open ground between the river and the 
green mass of the Loges Wood rising from its edge. 
Let him imagine the right brigade of the 78th cross- 
ing the river on the 1 6th, and plunging through mud 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 547 

knee-deep, as in the freshness of the youth of its 
men and its division spirit, without artillery prepara- 
tion, and without time to organize an attack prop- 
erly, answering the call of the Army to divert Ger- 
man strength from the fronts of the divisions in the 
center, it went across that exposed zone straight in 
face of the blaze from the machine-guns in the woods 
and the associated heights. Though the gray valley 
floor was sprinkled with the figures of the dead and 
wounded, the charge reached the edge of the wood; 
it had gained the foot of the stairs. 

- Loges Wood was not only high ground. Its char- 
acter and situation as well peculiarly suited it for 
defense. The wood was thick enough to prevent 
the artillery making a barrage to protect the infan- 
try, and sparse enough to give hidden machine-guns 
in the thickets a free play. It was estimated that 
there were machine-guns at intervals of forty yards 
in the German first line of defense, not to mention 
the interlocking system in the depths of the woods. 
The ground itself was a series of ravines, resem- 
bling nothing so much as a corrugated iron-roof. 
Each formed a natural avenue for machine-gun fire. 
The machine-gunners in the woods were supported 
by plentiful artillery in the rear to concentrate upon 
the open spaces before the wood and on the irregular 
open slopes east and west, which were linked together 
in singular adaptability for the enemy's purpose. He 



548 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

was not, in this instance, to depend upon small groups 
of machine-gunners to fight to the death. Knowing 
from past experience that these would be overcome 
by our hammering tactics, he was prepared to keep 
on putting in reserves for counter-attacks to answer 
our attacks. Therefore Loges Wood was to become 
a cockpit. 

The problem of how to attack it was baffling. Of 
course, encircling was the obvious method; but this 
meant a longer exposure of the men in the open, 
while as they swung in toward the wood they would 
have cross-fire from the adjoining positions into their 
backs. The troops that had reached the edge of 
the wood drove halfway through on the morning 
of the 17th, but were withdrawn to make an attack 
from the west. The reserves sent to hold the line 
they had gained had a rough and tumble with a 
German counter-attack, and had to yield a hundred 
yards. The attack from the west under the flank- 
ing fire of Hill 180 managed to dig in and hold on 
the west side of the wood, level with the line in the 
wood. This was progress; but it was progress at 
a terrible cost. The position was too murderous, 
however thoroughly the men dug, to be maintained. 
The Lightnings must either go forward or back, 
or be massacred in their fox-holes. 

On the morning of the 18th the support battalions 
passed through the front line, and, rushing and out- 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 549 

flanking machine-gun nests, in a fight that became a 
scramble of units, each clearing its way as fast as 
it could, numbers of our men broke through to the 
northern edge of the wood. All the while the Ger- 
mans, instead of holding fast to their positions, were 
acting on the offensive at every opportunity, infil- 
trating down the ravines, as they tried to creep 
around isolated parties, and again charging them. 
No commander could direct his troops under such 
conditions. It was a fight between individuals and 
groups acting as their own generals, of German vet- 
erans, with four years' experience in this kind of 
fighting, against the resourceful Lightnings. His 
artillery gassing the southern edge of the wood to 
keep back our reserves, the enemy kept forcing in 
more reserves in his counter-attacks, which gained 
weight and system until they forced our survivors, 
by ghastly losses, to retire to their starting point. 

Thus far the Germans were still holding the 
escarpment and citadel and the hills at the edge of 
the Bourgogne Wood, in line with the southern edge 
of the Loges Wood, and well south of its northern 
edge, while the Loges farm, between Grandpre and 
the Loges Wood, was an outpost of enfilade fire at 
close quarters. We know how in its night attack just 
before dawn, though it failed to take the citadel, 
the left brigade took and held Loges farm. The 
right brigade was to move at the same time on the 



550 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

wood. Though our artillery had tried to smash the 
nests, its shells had been unsuccessful among the 
trees, and when a frontal advance was attempted, 
it met heavier machine-gun fire than hitherto. At 
the same time we attacked the wood from another 
direction, trying for the eastern edge. The Ger- 
mans had the wood encircled with machine-guns, 
however. Our charge, as it turned in its swinging 
movement, met their fire in face, and received 
machine-gun fire in flank and rear from the village 
and high ground around the village of Champi- 
gneulle. Driven back to its starting point, it closed 
up its gaps and charged again under this cross-fire 
of machine-guns and a deluge of gas and high- 
explosive shells which shattered it. 

The brigade had used up all its reserves; the divi- 
sion had none available; Corps could send none. 
'By this time our divisions in the center had gained 
the Kriemhilde, and were consolidating their gains, 
and, therefore, events on other parts of the front 
had their influence in a Corps order to withdraw to 
the Grandpre-Saint-Juvin road. When the exhausted 
men in the gas-saturated Loges Wood were told that 
they were to retreat, they complained. They might 
be staggering with fatigue, and half-suffocated from 
wearing their gas masks, but they had been fighting 
in hot blood at close quarters for the wood. They 
did not want to yield to their adversary. They were 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 551 

critical of the command which compelled them to 
retrace their steps in the darkness, which was done 
in good order, across the levels spattered with the 
blood of their comrades who had breasted the 
machine-gun fire. 

Every bullet and shell which the men of either bri- 
gade of the 78th had received was one less fired at 
the heroic 42nd in its struggle for the mastery of 
the treacherous slopes and the wire and trenches 
of the stronghold of the Chatillon ridge. Their 
ferocious attacks, made in the hope of gains which 
the Army knew were impossible, had served another 
purpose in convincing the Germans that our final 
drive would concentrate on this flank instead of on 
the Barricourt ridge to the east of the whale-back. 
In this final drive the 78th, after hard fighting, was 
to enjoy its retribution; for it took Loges Wood, 
and afterward knew the joy of stretching its legs in 
rapid pursuit for twelve miles. Its casualties were 
5,234 for all of its operations. 

While we are following the careers of the divi- 
sions before the attack of November 1st, we must 
not forget that the 82nd was still in line on the right 
of the 78th. It had reached the Kriemhilde on 
October nth, and then in the general attack of the 
14th penetrated the Kriemhilde, where it bends west 
from the Chatillon ridge, and it had taken Hill 182 
and the other heights to the north and northeast 



552 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

which commanded the defenses of Saint- Juvin. As 
the result of these actions of determined initiative 
and heroic sacrifice, one regiment had 12 officers 
and 332 men fit for duty; another regimental com- 
mander reported that eighty per cent of his sur- 
vivors were unfit for duty, and that the other twenty 
per cent ought to be on the sick list. However, 
they could be depended upon until they swooned. 
The effective rifle strength of the division was 4,300, 
or less than a third of the normal total for a division. 
Yet it attacked in support of the 78th's effort against 
Loges Wood. Then it settled down to holding its 
lines and patrolling. 

Provident General Duncan saved his exhausted 
men from a part of the strain by skillful front-line 
reliefs on alternate nights. As the All-Americas 
might not go into rest as a division, he established 
a rest camp of his own, where exhausted, slightly 
gassed, wounded, and sick men had clean clothing, 
baths, and plenty of hot food, which rehabilitated 
them into " effectives "; and this enabled him to keep 
the 82nd in line until the night of October 31st, 
when the exhaustion of its memorable service in the 
Aire trough was to rob it of the thrill of pursuing 
the enemy to the Meuse, which the now rested 77th 
and 80th, taking its place, were to know. It had 
taken 900 prisoners, and paid for its success with 
6,764 casualties. 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 553 

So much for the left flank. We have bidden 
farewell to the Aire valley, whose trough and gap 
were now behind us ; but we were not to be through 
with the Meuse until the day of the armistice. I ap- 
proach no part of our fighting in France with a 
greater sense of incapability than the battle east of 
the Meuse — a separate battle, so influential in the 
fortunes of the main battle, which has never received 
its share of credit. Here every feature of the main 
battle was repeated in a confined arena which re- 
called to me the assaults on Port Arthur. I have 
already described the early operations of the 29th 
and 33rd in driving the wedge, which we hoped 
would relieve our Third Corps from long-range 
flanking fire to which it could not respond; and how 
they had been checked in the quixotic mission of an 
immediate conquest of the Borne de Cornouiller, or 
Hill 378. 

As we know, the Borne, about three miles from 
the Meuse, was the supreme height of the eastern 
valley wall. Southward in the direction of the attack 
it sloped down into the steep-walled ravine of the 
Vaux de Mille Mais, whose eastern end gave into 
a series of ridges rising to the summit of Hill 370, 
protecting the Grande Montagne Wood in front as 
it protected 378 in flank by the Grande Montagne 
Wood and the famous Molleville farm. Thence an 
encircling ridge turning southward toward the Ver- 



554 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

dun forts formed the rim of a bowl. Had the Ger- 
man Army, as planned, withdrawn to the Meuse 
line, these hills would have been to their defense 
what the hills of Verdun were to the French defense 
in the battle of 191 6. 

Once the heights were taken, except for a series 
of detached hills, the way was open to the plain of 
the Woevre and to Germany. Back of them and 
on their reverse slopes the Germans had built bar- 
racks for their men, and assembled their material 
for the great Verdun offensive. On the crests and 
the near slopes they had built concrete pill-boxes at 
critical points, and arranged a system of defense in 
the Verdun days, when they had learned by expe- 
rience the tactical value of every square rod of 
ground. The approach from the bottom of the bowl 
— which is a rough description — to the rim was cov- 
ered by many smaller interlocking and wooded hills 
and ridges cut by ravines. There was no ravine, it 
seemed, no part of this pit which was not visible to 
observers from some one of the heights. The opera- 
tion of the French Corps, under which our divisions 
operated, must be fan-shaped, sweeping up the walls 
of the bowl, as a wedge at any given point would 
have meant annihilation. The approach to the bowl 
for our troops was along a road through a valley, 
which was as warranted in receiving its name as 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 555 

any Death Valley in the war. On the French side 
of the old trench line this ran through an area of 
villages in utter ruin from the bombardments of the 
Verdun battle, then through Samogneux and more 
ruins, woods, and fields of shell-craters into the val- 
ley of the bowl itself. 

For five or six miles, then, stretched an area of 
desolation without any billeting places where troops 
could rest, except a few rat-infested and odorous, 
moist dugouts and cellars, roofed by the debris of 
villages. The young soldier who was going under 
fire for the first time, as he marched forward past 
that grayish, mottled, hideous landscape, might see 
the physical results of war upon earth, trees, and 
houses. When he came into Death Valley, he was 
to know its effects upon men. For two or three 
miles the road was always under shell-fire. By day 
visible to the enemy's observers, by night his gun- 
ners could be sure that guns registered upon it, if 
they fired into the darkness, would find a target on 
its congested reaches. It was inadequate to the 
traffic of the divisions engaged. Troops marching 
into battle must run its deadly gamut before they 
could deploy. It was the neck of the fan-shaped 
funnel of the battle-line. Transport was halted by 
shell-torn cars and motor-trucks and dead horses 
until they were removed, and by fresh craters from 



$$6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

large calibers until they were refilled. There was 
no rest for the engineers; all the branches which 
were not ordinarily in the front line knew what it 
was to be under fire. 

The Illinois men of the 33rd, on the left, after 
they had crossed the river and reached the slopes 
of the Borne de Cornouiller on the 9th, could move 
no farther on their front until the rim of the bowl 
was taken on their right. They stood off counter- 
attacks, and continued nagging the enemy until their 
relief on October 21st, forty-three days after they 
had gone into line on the left bank of the Meuse, 
and twenty-six days since, in the attack of September 
26th, they had taken Forges Wood in their brilliant 
swinging maneuver which had been followed by their 
skillful bridging and crossing of the river. Now the 
division was to go to the muddy and active Saint- 
Mihiel sector for a " rest," relieving the 79th, which 
had had its " rest " and was to return for a part in 
the last stages of the battle. Even the much traveled, 
enduring, industrious, and self-reliant infantry of the 
33rd had not had such a varied experience as the 
artillery brigade, which I may mention as a further 
illustration of how our units were moved here and 
there. It had been attached in turn to the 89th Divi- 
sion, the 1st Division, the Ninth French Corps, the 
91st Division, the 32nd Division, the Army artillery, 
and finally to the 89th Division for the drive of 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 557 

November 1st, without ever once having served with 
its own division. 

While the 33rd had been maintaining its ground, 
under orders to attempt no advance, in the east of 
the Meuse battle, the Blue and Grey 29th, its regi- 
ments intermixed at times with French regiments, 
had been forcing the action among the ravines and 
woods of the Molleville farm region against the 
same kind of offensive tactics that the Germans were 
using in the Loges Wood, and for an equally impor- 
tant object in relation to the plan of our operations 
as a whole. All parts of its front line and its sup- 
port positions were being continually gassed. The 
frequent shifting of its units in relation to the 
French, in an effort to find some system of making 
progress up the walls of the rim, were additional 
vexation in trying to keep organization in hand over 
such difficult ground, under such persistent and 
varied fire against the veteran Prussians and 
Wurtembergers, who were quick to make the most 
of every opening offered them. 

A branch of the Death Valley road, the Crepion 
road, runs up the eastern slope of the bowl. The 
point where it passes over the rim was most vital. 
From a rounded ridge on both sides of the road for 
a stretch between woods you look down upon the 
village of Crepion in the foreground and receding 
slopes in the distance. This point gained might 



558 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

flank the Etraye Wood positions, the Grande Mon- 
tagne, and eventually Hill 378, the Borne de Cor- 
nouiller itself. 

Commanding the southern side of the road and ap- 
proaches to the summit was Ormont Wood, which 
rose to the crest of a very high hill, 360, only 
eighteen feet lower than the Borne, which was de- 
fended by pill-boxes. On the other side of the road 
were the Reine and Chenes woods. Beyond these 
was the Belleu Wood, on the same side of the road. 
Belleu and Ormont were key points. Belleu was to 
have as bad as name as Belleau Wood in the 
Chateau-Thierry operations. 

On October 12th the Blues and Greys of the 29th, 
cooperating with the French, undertook in an en- 
circling movement, which was complex in its detail, 
to take the woods on both sides of the roads. This 
aroused all the spleen of the German artillery. It 
drew violent counter-attacks from the German in- 
fantry, continued in two days of in and out fighting. 
Successive charges reached the edges of Ormont. 
There under a tempest of artillery fire they looked 
up the slope through the thickets toward the summit 
of 360, where the machine-guns were emitting too 
murderous a plunging fire to permit them either to 
advance or to hold all the ground they had gained. 
On the north side of the road Reine Wood and a 
part of Chenes Wood were taken against counter- 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 559 

attacks. This was encouraging. Though it did not 
seem to make the capture of Ormont easier, it 
opened the way for an attack on the 15th toward 
Molleville farm on the left and Grande Montagne 
on the right. Much ground was gained on the left, 
and some on the right, where the fire from the 
Etraye ridge stopped the advance. 

We were slowly working our way toward the rim, 
using each bit of woods or ridge which we won as 
a lever for winning another. All the while we were 
an interior line, attacking up a gallery against an 
exterior line whose ends could interlock their cross- 
fire. On the 1 6th, by dint of the sheer pluck of units 
dodging artillery concentrations and zones of 
machine-gun fire, and wearing down machine-gun 
nests, further progress was made on the Grande 
Montagne. The 29th, always under shell-fire and 
gas, had been attacking and resisting counter- 
attacks for eight days. It was not yet " expended " 
by any means; but it was glad to find that another 
American division was coming into the arena to 
relieve some of its own as well as French ele- 
ments. 

Had we any division whose veterans might 
feel, as the result of their experience, that they 
were familiar with all kinds of warfare, it was 
the 26th, the " Yankee " Division, National Guard 
of New England. As I have mentioned in my first 



560 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

book, the Yankees had learned not to expect a sine- 
cure. Assignments which meant victory with theat- 
rical ease never came to them. If four divisions were 
to draw lots for four places in line, they took it for 
granted that the worst would go to the 26th, which 
had become expert in gripping the rough end of a 
stick. The second division to arrive in France, the 
26th was put into trenches, after a short period of 
training, in the ugly Chemin des Dames region, 
away from the American sector. From there it was 
sent direct into the mire of the Toul sector under the 
guns of Mont Sec, where it resisted the powerful 
thrust of German shock troops at Seicheprey. The 
length of time it remained in the Toul sector, and 
the length of the line it held there, might well have 
turned it into a division of mud wallowers; but it 
was able, on the contrary, to make some offensive 
thrusts of its own, and only longed for the time 
when it might have something like decent ground 
for an attack. From Toul it went to relieve the 
Marines and Regulars of the 2nd in the violent Pas- 
Fini sector on the Chateau-Thierry road, where, 
after more than two weeks in line, instead of having 
the period of rest and reorganization given to divi- 
sions before a big attack, it drove through to Epieds 
in the counter-offensive. Then at Saint-Mihiel, 
where it was with the French on the western side of 
the salient, by rapid marching it swung across to 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 561 

Vigneulles to meet the veteran 1st in closing the 
salient. 

If there were any replacements in the 26th who 
felt apprehension as they came up Death Valley, 
the older Yankees, in the name of all the mud, shells, 
gas, machine-gun fire, and hardships they had en- 
dured, soon gave them the heart of veteran com- 
radeship by their example. Saint-Mihiel had been 
revenge for them. It had set a sharper edge on 
their spirits. Artillery and all the other units having 
long served together, the Yankees were to be " ex- 
pended " as other veteran divisions had been for a 
great occasion in the battle — an occasion in keeping 
with their tough experience. It was not for them to 
have the straight problem of charging a trench sys- 
tem, but to maneuver in and out of these ravines and 
woods, facing this way and that against appalling 
difficulties. Maine forests, Green Mountains, White 
Mountains, little Rhode Island, and Massachusetts 
and Connecticut had traditions in their history in 
the background of the fresh traditions the Yankees 
had won in France. With the Blue and Greys al- 
ready in, and the 79th coming, the east of the 
Meuse battle became somewhat of a family affair 
of the original colonies. The French had great re- 
spect for the 26th. Much was expected of it, and 
it was to do much. 

It went to the attack immediately on the morning 



562 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of the 23rd. On the left it cooperated with the 
29th, which, feeling rejuvenated in the presence of 
Americans on its flank, concentrated its remaining 
effectives for an ambitious effort which carried the 
Americans through to the Etraye ridge, and even 
to the important Pylone, or observatory, before the 
advance elements were stopped. This was the high 
watermark for the Blue and Grey, splendidly won. 
Without trying to follow the detail of the maneuver, 
the 26th, as soon as it was known that its Etraye 
ridge attack was succeeding, put in a reserve bat- 
talion and rushed for the Belleu, that wood on the 
east of the Crepion road, just short of the vital point 
on the rim that I have mentioned. In the impetuos- 
ity of new troops in their first battle, and the spryness 
and wisdom of veterans, this battalion swept over 
the machine-guns and through the wood, which the 
29th had already entered, to meet a savage 
reception. 

This was shaking the whole plan of German de- 
fense. It was an insulting slap in the face to German 
tactics. Just over the crest beyond Belleu, as I have 
already mentioned, the slope ran down to the plain 
of the Woevre. The German had no shell-fire to 
spare now for the other bank of the Meuse. Bat- 
teries whose fire had been the curse of the Third 
Corps swung round in concentration on that exposed 
patch of woods. The machine-gunners in the pill- 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 563 

boxes and log-covered redoubts were reinforced by- 
others. It was a wonderful thing to have gone 
through Belleu Wood; but in order to have held, 
the Yankees would have needed something less per- 
meable to bullets and shell-fragments, and subject to 
gas, than a " stern and rock-bound coast " deter- 
mination. The battalion had to withdraw from the 
wood during the night, which was illumined by a fury 
of bursting shells. 

The Yankees were now fairly warmed to their 
task. On the 24th they fought all day for Belleu 
Wood and Hill 360 in the Ormont Wood. A 
cleverly arranged smoke-screen protected their first 
entry into Belleu, when they advanced five hundred 
yards. The Germans knew well how to fight in that 
wood. They could draw back from their advanced 
line of fox-holes to their strong shell-proof emplace- 
ments, and call for an artillery barrage to blast our 
charge. Then they could gather for a counter-attack. 
Four times that day they rushed the Yankees under 
the support of their concentrations of artillery, which 
prevented our reinforcements coming up, and the 
fourth time they drove out our survivors. Attack 
again! New England would not accept the rebuff 
from Prussia. At 2.30 the next morning the 
Yankees charged the wood in darkness and rain, 
and they went through it, too. 

There was no use of our artillery trying to crush 



564 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the concrete pill-boxes defending the Ormont height 
on the other side of the road. They were invulner- 
able to shells, for the Yankees were facing, in most 
exposed down-hill positions, the latest fashion in 
mobile tactics in command of well-tested defenses 
on high ground. Trench-mortar fire in addition to 
machine-gun fire and shells shattered the two bat- 
talions which tried by all the suppleness of veteran 
tactics to reach Hill 360 on the 23rd. The next 
morning, after the usual night of shell-fire and suf- 
fering from cold on the wet ground, another attack 
did reach the hill, and fought in and out around it 
and in the woods, but could not hold it against the 
plunging fire of unassailable pill-boxes. 

On October 24th a new commander, Brigadier- 
General Frank E. Bamford, who was trained in the 
school of the 1st, came to the 26th. Some people 
thought that our army staff was not in very intimate 
touch with the situation in the bowl. Preoccupied 
with the main battle, it was harassed by the flanking 
fire from the heights east of the Meuse. It wanted 
possession of these heights before starting the next 
general attack. A veteran division had been sent to 
take them. Evidently harder driving was required 
from Division Headquarters of the 26th. 

" Go through! " Individuals did not count; suc- 
cess alone counted. Officers had been relieved right 
and left for failing to succeed. " Go through ! " 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 565 

Other heights had been taken : why not these ? Per- 
haps someone had overlooked the fact that while 
the German army retained anything like cohesion or 
any dependable troops, its command would not yield 
this Gibraltar in covering its retreat toward Ger- 
many after it was out of Sedan and Mezieres, and 
withdrawn from the whale-back; and this was all 
the more reason for our desiring Gibraltar. The 
relief of other divisional commanders created noth- 
ing approaching the stir made by that of Major- 
General Clarence R. Edwards. 

Well-known before the war as Chief of the In- 
sular Bureau, possessing characteristics that were 
bound to attract attention, he had had command of 
the 26th from its organization. He went about 
much among his men. They all knew his tall figure. 
They and the line officers were bitter over losing 
him. If there had been a vote of the soldiers of 
the division on the question of recalling him, it 
would have been almost unanimous in his favor. 
The staff seemed to think that he was too kind to 
officers of a type which other division commanders 
relieved; that the success of the division had been 
due to the fine material in the ranks, which needed 
better direction; and finally that his long service had 
, broken him down to a point where he had lost his 
grip on his organization. In answer, his friends 
said that he had made the division out of the nucleus 



566 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

of many National Guard units and replacements. He 
had given it its original spirit of corps, and kept up 
its spirits under handicaps which would have de- 
moralized many divisions. 

In the first two days the 26th had suffered 2,000 
casualties. On the 27th they were sent into one of 
those ambitious attacks which look well on paper. 
To the right of Hill 360, which of course was on the 
rim, was a valley, and beyond that on higher ground 
the Moirey Wood, continuing the rim. Relying on 
veteran experience to carry out this daring maneuver, 
they were to swing around Hill 360, and into the 
valley, and take Moirey Wood. Such encircling 
movements had been carried out before; but their 
success had been dependent upon the relative 
strength of the positions to be encircled and of the 
forces occupying them, not to mention the volume of 
all kinds of fire on the flanks of the attack. This 
attack invited the reception that it met no less than 
a man who jumps into a rattlesnake's nest. The 
German army might be staggering to defeat, but 
east of the Meuse the German units were not yet in 
the mood to turn their backs to the heights, and re- 
tire to the plain. With a wonderful accuracy and 
system they poured the intensest concentration of 
artillery fire that even the bowl had known. All 
the guns on all the heights which could swing around 
upon any part of the bowl seemed to have only one 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 567 

target for shells of all calibers, mixed with gas, 
which is so hard on men who are clambering over 
slippery ground in violent physical effort. Units 
could not see one another from the smoke of the 
bursts, tearing gaps in the line, which was at the 
same time ripped by machine-gun fire from the pill- 
boxes. Every step forward meant more machine- 
gun fire in flank, and more of it in rear, without any 
diminution of the volume in front. It was not in 
human flesh to " go through "; and there was noth- 
ing more to be said on the subject. 

At the same time, on the other side of the Crepion 
road the 26th had sought to drive through Belleu 
Wood and over the ridge. If both attacks had suc- 
ceeded, and could have held the ground gained, we 
might have won the battle; but we could not have 
held it under the artillery concentrations which the 
Germans were able to deliver, unless each man had 
a shell-proof pill-box of the weight of a trench hel- 
met — an invention which would have ended the war 
before we ceased to be neutral. 

We were not in full possession of Belleu Wood 
yet. Conditions there were indeed " mixed." 
Yankees and Germans were dug in in fox-holes in 
the northern edges, at points where either could 
watch the other. Back of the Germans were their 
trenches on the crest, and their interlocking pill- 
boxes; at their command always the infernal con- 



568 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

centrations of artillery fire which could be brought 
down on a few minutes' notice. They still had the 
higher ground; they could slip back for rest into 
their bomb-proofs and camps in the valley. Many 
of our fox-holes were full of icy cold water, where 
the men had to lie — and did lie; for to show their 
heads was to receive a blast of fire. But the Yan- 
kees, all the while nagging the enemy by sniping and 
shell-fire, held on here and across the road under 
the same conditions. It was out of the question for 
warm food to reach the outposts, who received their 
rations by tossing biscuits from one fox-hole to 
another. 

On their military maps the French gave Belleau 
Wood, which the Marines had taken in the Chateau- 
Thierry campaign, the name of the Marine Wood. 
Belleu Wood or Ormont Wood might either be 
called the " Yankee " Wood, though the 29th might 
ask that one be called the " Blue and Grey " Wood, 
or Grande Montagne the " Blue and Grey " moun- 
tain. After having repulsed counter-attacks on pre- 
vious days, depleted as it was in numbers, the 29th 
supported the attack of the 26th through Belleu 
Wood in an attack through Wavrille Wood, where 
it met irresistible fire of the same kind as the 26th 
had against Hill 360 and Moirey Wood. 

The 29th's three weeks' service in the hell's tor- 
ment of the bowl was now over. In its place came 
the 79th, National Army, which was also from both 



A CITADEL AND A BOWL 569 

sides of Mason and Dixon's line, north and south 
mingling in its ranks. We know the 79th of old 
for its rush down the Montfaucon valley and over 
the slopes in the first stage of the battle. The isola- 
tion of units in slippery ravines and woods, and the 
depth of the shelled area, required two nights for 
relief. The 29th's 5,636 casualties were balanced 
Dn the bloody ledger of its record by 2,300 prisoners. 
This was a remarkable showing; testimony of 
harvest won by bold reactions against counter- 
attacks, of charges which made a combing sweep in 
"heir sturdy rushes, even when they had to yield some 
}f the ground won. Man to man the Blue and Greys 
had given the enemy better than he sent; but not in 
Dther respects. They could not answer his artillery 
shell for shell, or even one shell to three. 

My glimpses of the battle east of the Meuse 
among the Verdun hills recalled the days of the Ver- 
dun battle, while the French were stalling, with 
powerful artillery support, on the muddy crests and 
slopes and in the slippery ravines. When they re- 
took Douaumont and Vaux, they had a cloud of 
shell-bursts rolling in front of the charge. We were 
going relatively naked to the charge. This had been 
our fortune in most of our attacks in the Meuse- 
Argonne, as our part in driving in our man-power 
to hasten the end of the war. There was something 
pitiful about our divisional artillery in the bowl, try- 
ing to answer the smashing fire of the outnumbering 



570 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

guns with their long-range fire from the heights. 
The artillery of the 29th for three weeks kept its 
shifts going night and day, while the veteran artil- 
lerists of the 26th had problems in arranging 
patterns of barrages to cover the infiltrating attacks 
which put new wrinkles in their experience. 

Of the 29th's wounded, thirty-five per cent were 
gassed. The whole area of the bowl was continually 
gassed. Sickness was inevitable from lack of drink- 
ing water, warm food, and proper care. While the 
Germans could slip back to billets on the reverse 
slopes, and to shell-proof shelters, let it be repeated 
that our men had to remain all the time under the 
nerve-racking shell-fire in the open, and under 
soaking rains that made every hole they dug on the 
lower levels a well. Some of the woods which they 
occupied were shelled until they could see from end 
to end through the remaining limbless poles of the 
trunks. The desolation of Delville and Trones 
woods in the Somme battle were reproduced; but the 
26th and the 29th were there to attack, and they 
kept on attacking. The fire they drew was a mighty 
factor in the success of our thrusts in the main battle 
against the whale-back. It should be enough for any 
soldier to say that he served east of the Meuse. The 
79th and the 26th, which remained in to the death, 
were to sweep over the rim into the plain, as we 
shall see. 



XXXII 

THE FINAL ATTACK 

Stalwart 89th and 90th — Bantheville Wood cleaned up by the 
89th — The 90th to the Freya system — The 5th, back in line, 
takes Aincreville and Brieulles — America's two-edged sword 
— An aggressive army and the Fourteen Points — Would the 
German links snap? — A last push — The military machine 
running smoothly — Vigorous divisions in line — Veterans in 
reserve — " We will go through." 

The rest of the picture, which had been done in the 
miniature of agonizing efforts for small gains, was 
now to be painted in bold strokes on a swiftly flowing 
canvas. During the last ten days of October, after 
the general attack of the 14th had slowed down, 
our preparations for the final attack included the 
taking of certain positions which would be service- 
able as " jumping-off " places, and the arrival of two 
conspicuously able National Army divisions. 

The 89th had been formed under Major-General 
Leonard Wood, which assured that the men of clear 
eyes and fine physique, drafted from Kansas and 
Missouri, would be well and sympathetically trained. 
If the division might not have Wood at its head in 
France, it was to have in his successor, Major-Gen- 

S7i 



572 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

eral William M. Wright, a leader worthy to exem- 
plify the standards he had established. All the army 
knew " Bill" Wright, a man of the world as well 
as an all-round soldier, practical and broad-minded, 
who faced a problem or an enemy in all four-square 
robustness and energetic determination. In the 
Saint-Mihiel drive, and afterward in the Saint-Mi hi el 
sector, the 89th had fully met the high expectation 
of its old commander and his admirers. 

His men were as devoted to Major-General Henry 
T. Allen, who had formed the 90th from recruits 
and commanded it in France. The six feet of " Hal " 
Allen were as straight, now that his hair was gray, 
and he was as spare in body and as youthful in spirit 
as in the days when he was a lieutenant of cavalry, 
or organized the Philippine Constabulary. He too 
was known to all the army, always " all there," 
whether on parade or in a stuffy dugout, or in any 
group of men at home or abroad. When he went 
among his tall Texans they said that they had a gen- 
eral who looked like a general. Both Allen and 
Wright were afterward rewarded with corps com- 
mands for their service in the concluding drive of 
the battle. 

As for the spirit of the infantry of the 90th dur- 
ing all the battle, only three stragglers were reported 
from the whole division. They were from Texas, 
as they were prompt to tell you. They had shown 



THE FINAL ATTACK 573 

in the mire of the Saint-Mihiel salient that men from 
a very dry atmosphere can endure penetrating humid 
cold as well as the hot sun. The sight of them, no 
less than of the 89th and other divisions from the 
Middle West, was an assurance that anemia does 
not flourish in their native States. Neither the 89th 
nor the 90th had received enough replacements to 
change their local character. Their regional pride 
was accordingly almost as strong as their divisional 
pride. Both, when they arrived in the Meuse-Ar- 
gonne, were considered as " shock " divisions, so 
rapid had been their progress in efficiency since they 
had come to France. 

Taking over from the 32nd on October 19th, the 
89th immediately proceeded to clean up the trouble- 
some Bantheville Wood. Though the operation was 
entirely successful, it required severe fighting under 
other adverse conditions than machine-gun and artil- 
lery fire, which grew worse, the farther the infantry 
advanced. The roads through the wood, which was 
continually gassed, were impassable. Stretcher- 
bearers had to wade in mud knee-deep for the mile 
and a half of its length in bringing back the shiver- 
ing wounded, and the men stricken with influenza. 

When the Germans built that excellent bathing 
and disinfecting plant at Gesnes, they did the 89th 
a good turn. Taking care of over four thousand 
of our exhausted men, it was the adjutant of their 



574 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

fine physique in so conserving the strength of the 
division that it was able, after ten days of action 
and exposure which might well have " expended " 
it, to fight its way to the Meuse and across the 
Meuse in the ten days of advance from November 
ist until the armistice. 

The 90th, taking over on October 22nd from the 
5th Division in that violent sector of the Rappes 
Wood in front of Bantheville, under the cross artil- 
lery fire from the heights of the whale-back and 
east of the Meuse, its line joining the 89th on the 
left, made a spring for the village of Bantheville 
on the 23rd, capturing and holding it. The next 
day it drove ahead until it was up to the Freya 
Stellung, the second line of defense of the whale- 
back, with a precision that defied the enemy's artil- 
lery and machine-guns. The Freya was not as 
strong as the Kriemhilde, neither being of course a 
trench system in the former accepted sense; but the 
Freya had fragments of trenches and strong posi- 
tions for machine-guns, linked together in character- 
istic mobile defense. Eager as the Texans were to 
attack the Freya, it was not in the plan that they 
should. They were to dig in and expose themselves 
as little as possible to the cross artillery fire, and 
" make medicine " for their part in the general 
attack, which would sweep over the Freya on No- 
vember ist. The Germans tried several counter- 



THE FINAL ATTACK 575 

attacks; but every one was promptly repulsed by 
the accurate fire of the Texans, whom the deluges 
of shells could not budge from their positions. 

Meanwhile the tried regulars of the 5th Division, 
which had come into line on the Meuse flank on 
October 27th, had a few chores to do before they 
were to carry out their brilliant programme in cross- 
ing the Meuse. I use the word chores, because the 
Aces, now refreshed and full of " pep," made their 
successes appear to be little more. We had not yet 
taken Brieulles on the river bank, though it had 
been set as a part of the Army objective of the 
initial attack of September 26th. For four weeks it 
had been whipping our flanks with its machine-gun 
fire and protecting enfilading German batteries. 
After having vigilantly pushed forward aggressive 
patrols, which seized vantage points, in a rush in the 
darkness on the morning of the 30th, the 5th took 
Aincreville. That evening skirmishers went into 
Brieulles, and cleared it of the enemy. To a point 
opposite Liny, where the river curved westward, we 
had straightened out our line on the Meuse bank, 
shortening our Third Corps front, which at the 
same time had cut deeper into the flank of the 
Barricourt ridge, the final crest of the whale- 
back. 

This was cheerful news for our Army command. 
It was an augury confirming all our information in 



576 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

the latter days of October. The rapid advance of 
the other Allied armies to the west was having a 
pronounced effect. Indeed, during the second stage 
of the Meuse-Argonne battle, powerful as the Ger- 
man resistance had been, it was not that of full divi- 
sions, as a rule, but of elements of divisions hurried 
into line, their officers sometimes uncertain of the 
identity of units on their flanks, as they strove to 
obey orders to hold at any cost. An army, in its 
many units, is like a series of steel links. For over 
four years the German army had presented a front 
possessed of the alternate mobility of a chain and 
the rigidity of a steel wall. So rapidly was German 
morale now deteriorating that it looked as if the 
chain, worn by attrition, might snap in a confusion 
of scattering links. 

America's part in this juncture was that of a two- 
edged sword. One edge was preparing to strike 
with all our military force against the German 
front. It is needless to repeat how influential is 
psychologic suggestion on a soldier's mood. Our 
soldiers were forbidden to speak of peace; all 
thought of peace being as resolutely suppressed in 
the military mind as apprehension of defeat, when 
the German offensives in the spring had seemed to 
be threatening Paris. The average soldier, being a 
human being, and particularly the veteran who had 
survived many battles, if he thought the end were 



THE FINAL ATTACK 577 

near, did not want to be the " last man killed in the 
war." The more he had endured, the more he 
wanted to live. So we must leave peace to the 
peace-makers. The war-makers must keep at war. 
The harder we fought in the days to come, the bet- 
ter we served the purpose of President Wilson, the 
Commander-in-Chief. 

The other edge of our sword was his Fourteen 
Points. The German soldier now knew that he 
could never undertake another offensive. Hence- 
forth his back was against the wall. A soldier who 
submitted to the will of his superiors in full faith 
in their promises of victory, a soldier who fought 
peculiarly for victory on enemy soil, found his great 
organization, which he had been told was uncon- 
querable, breaking, and himself yielding in disheart- 
ening retreat the ground that his sacrifice had won. 
He may have thought that he had fought in his 
country's defense by invading France; now he knew 
that defense had become a matter of the defense of 
his own soil. Would he fight to the last ditch? 
Would he resist on the Meuse as the British had 
at Ypres, and the French at Verdun, and the South 
at Appomattox? The question was for him, the 
soldier, to answer. It always is, in every war. 
Leadership and staff work can effect nothing, unless 
the soldiers are for battle. The . aim of all the 
propaganda on both sides was to promote the fight- 



578 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ing spirit of the masses at home and at the 
front. 

Germany still had millions of armed men, a great 
staff organization, and immense numbers of guns 
and quantities of ammunition. The organic disin- 
tegration was due to the mood of the Kaiser's 
atoms, his men. Strike a spark in them, flaming 
into desperate common defense as a people — and 
the German army might show as a whole something 
of the resistance to the death of individual units in 
the Meuse-Argonne. It was all very well to talk of 
a .swift movement to Berlin; but the Allied armies 
were themselves becoming exhausted. They were 
running short of fresh divisions; they were ham- 
pered for lack of transport and horses. An army 
advances slowly against rearguard action alone. 
Between Berlin and the Allied soldiers, who knew 
the meaning of interlocking fire from machine-guns 
manned by small groups of men, were Luxemburg, 
the walls of the Moselle and the Rhine valleys, and 
all the stretch of country beyond the Rhine, which 
meant long lines of railroad communication, many 
bridges to be built, and an infinite amount of labor. 
If a million German veterans decided that it was 
better to die than to yield, though we should go to 
Berlin, we should have much fighting on the way, 
increasing the ghastly cost in lives and treasure 
which was swamping the world in blood and debts. 



THE FINAL ATTACK 579 

A common view of German character during the 
war had held that once the Germans knew they 
were losing, their resistance would collapse; that 
they would fight well only when the odds were in 
their favor. This hardly accorded with their record 
under Frederick the Great. I think that with them, 
as with all peoples and all soldiers, much depended 
upon whether or not some event or train of events 
should have again aroused their passion. They 
lacked food; but a people in siege desperation will 
go hungry for a long time. 

It was a solace to the German soldier's mind, a 
tribute to his courage, for him to think that if 
America had not come into the war he would have 
won it from the other Allies. He had finished 
Russia and Rumania; he had France and Britain 
trembling, when a fresh and gigantic antagonist 
appeared against him. His retreats had begun just 
as American troops were making their force felt on 
the battle line. Despite censorship of the press, 
belittling our effort, despite the espionage of officers 
over their men, word traveled fast from German 
soldier to soldier. By talks with others who had 
fought, if not by actual contact, every German 
soldier knew with what freshness and initiative the 
Americans fought. If we had been slow in prepar- 
ing, once our enormous preparations came to a head 
in the immense numbers we were now throwing into 



580 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

battle, the effect was all the more impressive upon 
the German soldier, and through him upon the Ger- 
man people. 

This same America, which was now attacking 
with such increasing power, had made through its 
President the peace offer of the Fourteen Points, 
which had followed his speeches and notes during 
our neutrality, all to the same effect: that America 
— then considered weak and unmilitary — was not 
fighting in a war of conquest. The Fourteen Points 
guaranteed Germany from the dismemberment and 
subjection which the military caste had said would 
be her fate if she ever yielded to the Allies. After 
he awakened to his leaders' failure to give him vic- 
tory, the Fourteen Points and associated propaganda 
were infiltrating into the German soldier's mind as 
effectively as German infantry infiltrated down a 
ravine or through a patch of woods. One hand of 
America driving a bayonet into his face, the other 
was offering him self-preservation in the rear. Why 
fight to the last ditch when such terms were offered? 
Three out of four German soldiers were accepting 
them in the sense that they were no longer fighting 
to the death in machine-gun nests. The war was 
over; they wanted to go home. 

It was these two influences in the latter part of 
October and early November which were weakening 
the enemy's spirit on our front. Our conviction that 



THE FINAL ATTACK 581 

this time we would break through waxed stronger 
every day. Our men thought of the enemy as 
groggy; another smashing blow would topple him. 
We, too, wanted to go home ; we wanted an end of 
the horror and the hardship, as the days grew 
colder and the ground a moister bed. One supreme 
effort, and the orgy might be finished. The second 
stage of the battle had already passed, in our 
thoughts. We were entering a new stage, which 
should free us from the grim routine of siege. 
Something of the fervor of our preparations for the 
first stage, tempered and strengthened by the expe- 
rience gained in the second, was in our preparation 
for the third. 

Originally Marshal Foch had set the attack for 
October 28th; but postponement to November 1st 
was found to be better suited for his plans. This 
gave us time to take Aincreville and Brieulles, to 
bring up still more material, and further improve 
our arrangements. This time we were to have 
enough guns. More divisional artillery had come 
from the French foundries to the training camps, 
whence the waiting gunners brought them to the 
front. We had an increase of Army and Corps ar- 
tillery, while Admiral Plunkett's bluejackets, with 
their long-range naval pieces which they wanted to 
take up as close to the enemy as if they were machine- 
guns, were cheering to the eye. Yet altogether we 



582 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

were to have only one hundred guns of American 
make in the battle ; all the rest were of French make. 
Our columns of ammunition trucks, increased by the 
recent arrival of large numbers from home, seemed 
endless. Great piles of shells were rising beside the 
roads. The artillery of the 90th Division alone was 
to fire over 68,000 rounds in twenty- four hours on 
November 1st. All the artillery of divisions in 
reserve and in rest were brought up to the line. 
Artillerymen could endure longer service than the 
infantry. Those off duty might steal some sleep 
under shell-fire. This time we were to make a 
shield of shells, and a bridge of shells, too, for our 
troops. Despite our deep concentrations and the 
quantity of supplies moving, there was none of the 
confusion of the early days of the battle. Our staff 
heads had learned in a fierce school to control traffic. 
The machine was running comparatively smoothly — 
no military machine can ever run exactly so except 
in inspired accounts — equal to the extra and fore- 
seen demand upon it. Our officers in the different 
headquarters were making their tables of barrages 
and the dispositions for attack with the routine con- 
fidence of clerks balancing a ledger. We were no 
longer new to war. 

The plan for November 1st was only carrying out 
the final stage of the first plan which our ambition 
had dared: a sweep over the last of the crests of 



THE FINAL ATTACK 583 

the whale-back, and down the irregular descents 
toward the westward course of the Meuse and the 
Lille-Metz railway. On the left, the French Fourth 
Army was pressing against the western edge of the 
Bourgogne forest. Our left flank and their right 
flank were to " scallop " the forest, while it was 
filled with gas, instead of accompanying the flanking 
movement by a frontal drive, as we did in the 
Argonne. 

Our National Army divisions had come into their 
own, the National Guard divisions, which in the first 
and second stages had helped to pave the way for a 
glorious day, being in reserve, or " resting " in that 
muddy Saint-Mihiel sector. In Dickman's First 
Corps, at the left, were the 78th Division, still in 
line after the taking of the citadel and its ordeal in 
the Loges Wood; the 77th, come into line for a 
second time, after it had been in camp in its own 
Argonne Forest; and the peripatetic 80th, which 
had swung round from the Third Corps, come into 
line for the third time. Two divisions formed 
SummeraH's Fifth Corps in the center: the veteran 
2nd, which, after its service in helping to disengage 
Rheims, was back "home" in our army; and the 
89th, which had made Bantheville Wood secure as 
its " jumping-off " place. In Hines' Third Corps 
on the right were the 90th Division, which had 
taken Bantheville, and the 5th, now masters of 



584 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

Brieulles of evil repute and of Aincrevllle. Across 
the river with the French Second Colonial Corps, as 
an influential and thoroughly inclusive part of the 
whole movement, the 79th was preparing to start 
from Molleville farm to storm the Borne de Cor- 
nouiller, and the 26th, the only National Guard 
division in the front line, clinging to Belleu Wood 
and the edge of Ormont Wood, preparatory to 
rushing the eastern rim of the bowl. 

We know all these divisions of old. Their spurs 
jhad been won; they had tasted what Lord Kitchener 
called the salt of life in his message to the little 
British expeditionary force in August, 19 14, — if the 
mud, the blood, the lice, the gas, the evisceration of 
battle is to have this name rather than that of the 
acid of death. We know, too, the three divisions 
in reserve, which had had a longer experience. Some 
of their survivors had been toughened to the point 
of pickling by the salt of life. Two of them were 
National Guard, and one regular — the old depend- 
ables of the pioneers. It was good that they, and 
the 26th and the 2nd, too, among the pioneers, were 
to be in at the finish. Back of the Third Corps, in 
reserve on the right, was the 32nd, and of the First 
Corps on the left was the 42nd, both fit for any 
duty after the rest following their smashing blows 
which went through the Kriemhilde; and back of 
the Fifth Corps was the 1st, which, with usual 



THE FINAL ATTACK 585 

promptness, had trained in its ways the replace- 
ments who filled the gaps of its more than 8,000 
casualties in its October 4th-i ith drive. It was now 
under command of Brigadier-General Frank Parker, 
who was a soldier of the school of the 1st, and as 
knightly a young officer as ever won promotion in 
battle. 

I should have said that these three veteran divi- 
sions were to be in at the finish only in the event 
of the checking or exhaustion of one of the divisions 
in front. Their part was to follow up the advance, 
ready to spring into an opening. They were a whip 
from behind in the Army policy, which meant this 
time not only to go through the enemy's final defense 
line, but to keep on going. The 42nd seemed to 
have drawn the most favorable position for its ambi- 
tion, as the 78th was worn down by its attacks on 
the citadel and Loges Wood, and might have an 
initial nervous voltage to drive its legs, but not the 
reserve strength to remain long in pursuit. The ist's 
prospects seemed very dismal. Do you suppose that 
Kansans and Missourians of the 89th were going 
to yield place to any division? As for the 2nd, 
fresh in line, it was the " best " of the older divisions. 
You may have that on official authority from its 
headquarters, and on the informal authority of every 
officer and man of the 2nd, and also from every 
transport horse or mule, if they could have spoken. 



586 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

The i st was also the "best" division, as we know 
from equally numerous and valiant authorities. Any- 
one who cares to dispute either set of authorities, 
lacking, of course, information to justify his opinion, 
is left to his fate. 

Was the race-horse 2nd to allow the ist to take 
one rod of its line of advance? Not while the 2nd 
had a corporal's guard able to march and fight; not 
unless the ist could leap-frog the 2nd in aeroplanes. 
The ist might do police duty and repair roads after 
it was tired out in trying to keep in sight of the 2nd's 
heels. Were the Texans of the 90th, who were 
just becoming warmed up to the Argonne battle, to 
allow the 32nd to do anything but trail in their 
wake ? Was the regular 5th, which had taken a lien 
on the west bank of the Meuse, to accept assistance 
from National Guardsmen, even if they were the 
greedy and swift Arrows? 

We had in this array of divisions — to pass a gen- 
eral compliment, as they passed few compliments to 
one another because the " bests " were so numerous 
— infantry which thrilled the most stale of observers 
with admiration apart from national pride. I had 
heard much of the " trench look " and the " battle 
face," which, as seen by civilians, sometimes puzzled 
men long at the front. I saw it, as I understand it, 
at Chateau-Thierry and during the Meuse-Argonne 
battle ; I saw it, too, in the Ypres salient and at Ver- 



THE FINAL ATTACK 587 

dun. It was sharp-featured, in keeping with lithe 
muscular bodies, with a smile that possibly took its 
character from that " salt of life," a direct look in 
the eye in answer to a challenge, — the face of a 
man who has seen the flight of things more dan- 
gerous than baseballs, who knows grinding discipline, 
roofless, fireless billets in midwinter, and the sub- 
mission of self to a cause in the grimmest of team- 
play. 

Our infantry were ready, resolutely and confi- 
dently ready. All our gunners, there on the slopes, 
in the ravines and woods, in the midst of that array 
of guns, were ready to pour forth their hurricane 
of shells. Our machine-gun battalions, our medical, 
engineer, and salvage units, our ammunition trains, 
our rolling kitchens, were ready. General Maistre, 
who came from Marshal Foch to Fifth Corps head- 
quarters the night before the attack, asked if we 
would " go through." 

" We will go through," Summerall replied. 

"Do you want to see my plans?" Summerall 
asked Pershing. 

" No. I know them." 

Summerall went out with him to his car. 

" Will you go through? " Pershing asked him. 

"We will." 

Pershing put the same all-embracing question to 
Hines and Dickman, and received the same reso- 



5 88 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

lute answer. Corps commanders were only repeat- 
ing the messages of division, brigade, and battalion 
commanders, who were speaking the thought of the 
men. 

" We will go through." 



XXXIII 

VICTORY 

A march of victory in the center — Held on the left — But full speed 
on the second day — The 89th stays in — Veterans in leash — 
The 90th to the river wall — The 5th pivoting — The Borne at 
last taken by the 79th — The 5th gets across the Meuse — Vary- 
ing resistance to the main advance — Rainbows give way to 
French entry into Sedan — In motion from Meuse to Moselle on 
the last day — Isolated divisions in Flanders — Every village 
in France — The folly of war. 

One who moved about in the days before and the 
night before the attack, from the railheads to the 
front, his vision embracing the whole panorama, 
no longer need talk of what America was going to 
do in the war. He saw what America had done 
since September 26th between the ruins of the old 
trench system and the Kriemhilde Stellung, and he 
knew that the army which was to spring into action 
at dawn on the morning of November 1st was the 
greatest in our history. 

When the simmering volcano of routine artillery 
fire broke into eruption at 3.30, racking the earth 
with concussions and assaulting the heavens with 
blinding flashes, as the stream of shells from the 

589 



59 o OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

larger caliber of the forest of guns passed over the 
streams from the smaller caliber, it seemed that all 
the Germans in the front line must be mashed into 
the earth. If the preliminary bombardment left any 
alive, then that monstrous curtain of shell-bursts in 
front of the advancing infantry, and the trench mor- 
tar fire, and the sheets of machine-gun bullets that 
increased the strength of the shield, must hold them 
trussed to the earth until it passed over them and 
our men were upon them. 

So it was with the 2nd Division, where I followed 
up the advance. With the seeming facility with 
which the easier hurdles are taken in a steeple-chase, 
the wave of the 2nd had swept over the fragmentary 
trenches of the Kriemhilde system beyond Sommer- 
ance, where the great attacks of the 1st and the 
82nd had died down, and our line had been little 
changed by the general attack of October 14th, 
which had mastered the Kriemhilde in the center. 
There were occasional enemy shell-bursts in patches 
of woods and on obvious points, fired by German 
guns, halting in retreat or before withdrawal from 
their old positions, and occasional bullets cracked by 
from the left in the region of the Bourgogne forest; 
but all this seemed only the venomous and hopeless 
spite of a rearguard action that was breaking into a 
rout. Only at long intervals did you see a prone, 
still figure in khaki on the earth; and our wounded 




MAP NO. 11 

DIVISIONS IN THE THIRD STAGE OF THE MEUSE-ARGOXXE 

BATTLE, OCTOBER 31ST-NOVEMBER llTH. 



VICTORY 591 

were not numerous. German prisoners were being 
rounded up from bushes and gullies, and in gray 
files they were crossing the fields to the rear, as the 
combings of a drive which was moving as fast this 
time as the pencilings on the map of high ambition. 
Admired by the Allies for our speed, we were show- 
ing it now in legs unlimbered and free of the chains 
that had encompassed us for over a month. 

It had ceased to be a battle on the way to Bayon- 
ville-et-Chennery. It was a march, a joyous march 
of victory, more appealing than any city parade, you 
may be sure. Our guns and transport were coming 
along roads which were free of any except a rare 
vagrant shell-burst. Indeed, everything in the 2nd's 
sector was going according to schedule. It was good 
to be with the 2nd, as I had learned in June and 
July in the Chateau-Thierry operations. One 
stopped and watched for the figures ahead to appear 
in their mobile swiftness in open spaces, as they came 
out of woods and ravines. One knew by instinct 
that we were going over the heights and down the 
apron this time. The weather was with us, too. 
After the long period of chill rains and hardships, a 
kindly sunshine filtered through the leaden sky. 
There had been more thrilling days in the war, 
thrilling with triumph and apprehension for me : 
when I was in Brussels, before the German avalanche 
arrived; when I saw the British battle fleet go out 



592 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

to sea ; when I saw the French driving the Germans 
back in the first battle of the Marne; when I saw 
the British and French in their retreat before the 
German offensives of 191 8; when I saw our first 
contingent land in France. But the crowning day 
was the one which brought forth the confession of 
the German communique that we had broken the 
German line. 

This is not saying, though the Fifth Corps in the 
center reached its objectives, except for a few hun- 
dred yards at some points, that everything in the 
schedule went without a hitch along the whole front. 
Our movement was fan-shaped, swinging toward the 
loop of the Meuse in its bend westward. The center 
of gravity, as I understood the plan, was to pass 
from the Fifth Corps to the First on the left, whose 
flank was on the Bourgogne forest, with an intricate 
tactical problem to solve in scalloping and flank 
maneuvers. Here we met severe resistance from 
the Germans, who were still inclined to hold their 
bastion. Though the 78th had pounded its old 
enemy, the Loges Wood, with shells of big calibers 
from heavy American and French batteries assigned 
to it, the Germans still clung to their machine-guns; 
and though the Bourgogne Wood was thoroughly 
gassed, it poured in a strong flanking fire, and even 
sent out one counter-attack. The 77th was checked 
by heavy casualties in its effort to storm Champi- 



VICTORY 593 

gneulle. The 8oth, also fresh and impetuously de- 
termined to let nothing stop it, found the Germans 
showing their old form in defending woods and 
hills, and had to repeat their attacks and repulse 
counter-attacks; for our left, which had the longest 
swing to make, was delayed, while our center, taking 
over the center of gravity as the result of its ad- 
vance, had gone ahead for four and five miles. 

The Rainbows of the 42nd, in reserve with the 
First Corps, were fractious. Weren't they in sight 
of the rainbow's end of their year in France? Let 
them in, and they would take it. Fine troops the 
78th, 77th, and 80th, no doubt, thought the Rain- 
bows, but the 42nd was the 42nd, and belonged to 
a class by itself for this kind of work. The three 
divisions of the First Corps were not offering 
iridescent travelers in the rear a holiday on the path 
they had blazed. They were about to enjoy it them- 
selves. 

The enemy was making his stand on the left to 
prevent our wholesale capture of prisoners, when 
he found that the combined movement of the French 
and American armies would put him into a trap ; but 
the next day he was out of the Loges Wood and 
Champigneulle, and retreating through the Bour- 
gogne forest. , All three divisions took up the pur- 
suit, to make up for lost time — and catch up with 
the procession. They were to show that they could 



594 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

move fast, too. On the 2nd they made four and five 
miles, and on the 3rd they kept up the same gait, 
which was a marvelous performance in deployment 
and contact and endurance. 

The Fifth Corps in the center faced the final 
heights of the whale-back, the Barricourt crest. For 
its support it had an overwhelming concentration of 
artillery fire, which Summerall, the gunner, required 
in order to keep his word to " go through." 
Lejeune's race-horse 2nd surpassed its own record 
for speed, as we have seen. Not only did it take 
its own objectives, but it was called on to send sup- 
port elements over to assist the left. It was glad 
to send support elements anywhere, if they filled a 
gap which the 1st might have filled. 

The 89th, the other division of the Fifth Corps, 
was thrown head on against the Barricourt heights. 
Wright had been among his officers and men, making 
them feel that all the Mississippi valley was calling 
on them for all there was in them in this attack. 
They might have been gassed and mired in the 
Bantheville Wood, they might be tired; but their 
great day had come. They were " going through." 
The Stokes mortars kept up with the assault waves, 
even dragging wagons of ammunition with them; a 
brigade of artillery was following up the infantry 
two hours after the attack began. Prodigious effort 
had a road through the mire of Bantheville Wood 



VICTORY 595 

by 10.30 in the morning, with all the divisional trans- 
port moving up. No less than those hard-shell vet- 
erans of the 2nd, the 89th went ahead from the 
start in the conviction that success was certain. Be- 
fore that day was over they ran into nests of 
machine-guns which ordinarily ought to have re- 
pulsed the most gallant charge, but the waves of 
infantry, with supports fast on their heels, had tasted 
victory in its intoxicating depths, and they overcame 
every obstacle. That night the Barricourt ridge was 
ours; when the Germans stated that their line was 
broken, it meant that we had broken German resist- 
ance on the whale-back. The way was open to the 
Meuse, and Germans in front of the First Corps 
had better make the most of the darkness of the 
night of the 1st for retreat. 

As the two divisions of the Fifth Corps, the 2nd 
and the 89th, in the pell-mell rush to get the final 
crest, which was of such decisive importance in the 
strategic plan, had become extended, the shorter ad- 
vances required of them during the next two days, 
which included some stout, if uneven, resistance, by 
the Germans, allowed them time to get transport in 
order and bring up more artillery. Those old 
hounds of the 1st, with their mouths watering, were 
moving as close up to the front as their schedule 
would permit, and straining at the leash. The 89th, 
having had such a grueling time in going over the 



596 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

ridge, and such hard marching after the exhaustion 
of cleaning up Bantheville Wood, might be consid- 
ered nominally expended, if not in fact. When the 
Fifth Corps gave an order that the ist take over 
the Berth's place, General Wright objected. Take 
out his Kansans and Missourians ! They were only 
getting their second wind. They were coming as 
strong as a flood on the Missouri. The order was 
revoked; a second one later was scotched by the 
same effective protest. Meanwhile the General was 
up at the front, urging on his tired men with the 
persuasive argument of the Corps threat. So the 
89th was to remain in until the finish, while the ist, 
licking its chops and panting, swinging this way and 
that, was begging: " Just give us one bite ! " 

Prospects were no better for the 32nd, in reserve 
with the Third Corps on the right. Everybody 
could not be in this battle; the 5th and the 90th 
were willing that the Arrows should study the 
ground they had won, but they might not participate 
in winning more. Ely's and Allen's men were pre- 
occupied with that undertaking themselves, and too 
busy to look after tourist parties. Whereat the Ar- 
rows sharpened their points in impatience, as they 
pried forward, and tightened their bowstrings, 
ready for a flight if they could draw the bows which, 
if they had the chance, would show the divisions in 
front the character of veteran skill. 



VICTORY 597 

If the Fifth Corps took its objectives, you might 
be certain that General Hines of the Third Corps 
on the right would take his, and maintain his repu- 
tation for brevity by reporting the fact with no more 
embellishment than a ship's log. If he had written 
Caesar's commentaries, they would have been com- 
pressed into one chapter. The former commander 
of the bull-dog 4th Division, who had been on the 
Meuse flank under the cross artillery fire from Sep- 
tember 26th, knew his ground. As the Third Corps 
had its flank on the Meuse and was to swing in 
toward the river bank, it had the shortest advance 
of the three corps to make. 

The Texans of the 90th, on the left of his Corps, 
had been fretting for a week in face of the Freya 
Stellung and the Andevanne ridge, which they were 
now to take. In one of his trips about the front, 
General Allen had had his artillery commander 
killed at his side by a shell. His Texans were the 
kind that would carry out his careful plans for the 
attack. Barrages were cleverly arranged; machine- 
gunners put on high points for covering fire. On the 
1st the Texans made short work of the Freya 
Stellung, reaching their objectives at every point* 
and eager to go ahead. The Germans put in a first- 
class division against the Texans on the night of the 
2nd; but that did not make any difference. It was 
a furious give and take at some points, but on the 



598 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

night of the 2nd they had Villers-devant-Dun and 
Hill 212. The next day, in face of only desultory 
shelling, it was a matter of tireless maneuver and 
scattered fighting, with the worst punishment from 
low-flying German planes, raking our lines with 
machine-gun bullets. That night the 90th was or- 
ganizing on the Halles ridge, preparatory to striking 
for the river bank. 

The 5th, the right division of the Third Corps, as 
it pivoted on the Meuse bank, had patrols studying 
the river for a crossing at Brieulles and beyond on 
November 1st. The next morning its left entered 
Clery-le-Petit, a mile farther down the river from 
Brieulles, and cleaned up the horseshoe bluff known 
as the Punch-bowl. Now we had word that the 
Fourth French Army, on the west, and our First 
Corps, on the east, of the Bourgogne forest, in their 
rapid pursuit were out of touch with the enemy. 
This prompted energetic measures by the 5th in 
crossing the river, which General Ely was to apply 
in dashing initiative that will hold our attention later. 

By this time on that shell-cursed western slope of 
the Meuse where many of our divisions had fought 
under the cross-fire from the galleries, there was 
only an occasional burst. Apart from the taking of 
the whale-back, there was another reason — the 
action east of the Meuse, where our divisions, co- 
operating with the French, had sprung to the attack 



VICTORY 599 

on the morning of November 1st no less energet- 
ically than on the main battlefield. The Yankees 
of the 26th, as the only National Guard division 
then in the front line, sharing the freshened confi- 
dence of the hour, put the survivors of all four regi- 
ments in line, their sector being now farther south, 
over the ridges and through the woods north of Ver- 
dun, where they were hampered by bad roads and 
mud, which was to give them a part in keeping with 
their record in the last acts of the drama. The 79th 
was making a maneuver up the slopes of the bowl 
which called for initiative and consummate tactical 
resourcefulness. Kuhn, who had formed the divi- 
sion and led it, knew his men. There was nothing 
they would not attempt. He knew his enemy, too. 
A great honor had come to the 79th, the honor of 
storming the Borne de Cornouiller, or Hill 378, the 
highest of all the hills we took in the battle, — 
" corned willy," as the soldiers fighting for it on cold 
corned beef called it. 

There was no rapid pursuit for them, but wicked 
uphill work all the way, in three days of repeated 
charges. Starting from the Molleville farm clear- 
ing, they had to ascend the steep, wooded slopes of 
the Etraye and Grande Montagne ridges, and 
struggle down one side and up the other of that 
deadly Vaux de Mille Mais and other ravines, be- 
fore they were in sight of the Borne. The German 



6oo OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

'grew bitter in his resistance at the thought of having 
to yield this favorite height, which had given his ob- 
servers a far-flung view, and his artillery cover to 
swing the volume of fire into the flank of our Third 
Corps. The Borne was a bald and gently rounded 
ridge, with the undulating plateau-like crest, facing 
the bare and steep slope which the 79th had to 
ascend, peculiarly favorable for machine-gun de- 
fense in front, while along the bordering road to the 
west, in the edge of the Grande Montagne Wood, 
machine-guns could sweep in flank the road and the 
whole slope. Piles of cartridge cases which had been 
emptied into our waves were silent witnesses of the 
fire the assaults of the 79th had endured when every 
khaki figure was exposed on the blue sky-line, a piti- 
lessly distinct silhouette at close range. 

Checked at this point and that, taking advantage 
of each fresh gain in gathering their strength for 
another effort, the men of the 79th kept on until 
they had worked their way through the woods and 
finally overrun the crest. There in their triumph, as 
they looked far across the Meuse over the hills and 
ridges and patches of woods, they might see the 
very heights of the whale-back which had been their 
goal when they charged down the valley of Mont- 
faucon on September 26th in their baptism of fire. 
That Borne was the crowning point of those frown- 
ing hills and ridges east of the Meuse, which bullet- 



VICTORY 60 1 

headed Prussian staff officers, who dreamed of fight- 
ing to the last ditch, had foreseen as a line of im- 
pregnable defense on French soil, which should be- 
come as horrible a shambles as their neighbors, the 
hills of Verdun. They had a new and inexpressibly 
grateful relation now to the vineyards of France, 
her well-tilled fields, her flower gardens of the 
Riviera, and the security of the whole world — for 
everywhere the bullet-headed Prussian officer was 
becoming the protesting flotsam in the midst of a 
breaking army which he could not control. The 79th 
had gone as far as it was wanted to go in following 
north the course of the Meuse in that movement 
begun on October 8th when the 33rd crossed the 
Meuse and advanced on the flank of the 29th toward 
the Borne. 

Now another division, the 5th, was to cross the 
Meuse. The Meuse bottoms were broad, as I have 
hitherto noted, and swampy in places under the 
heavy rains, and required that the Meuse canal as 
well as the river should be bridged. There were 
many points on the river bottoms as well as on the 
hills on the east bank where machine-gunners might 
hide. German units still being urged to stand felt the 
appeal to their skill of such an advantage of position; 
their commanders the value of holding all the Meuse 
heights they could to assist the retreat of the Ger- 
mans on the west. The 5th, despite its daring ef- 



602 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

forts, was not to achieve a crossing until the 90th 
on its left had finished its longer swing. On the 
night of the 3rd our Third Corps measured eight 
miles of front on the river bank. For the 5th and 
the other divisions, as their fan-shaped movement 
toward the bend brought each in turn to the river, 
it was a case of patrols finding openings by night 
between the tornadoes of machine-gun fire, where 
the engineers might do the building under the pro- 
tection of our artillery. Material for the bridges 
had to be found or brought from the rear. In this 
our initiative and resourcefulness were at their 
best. 

At dark on the night of the 3rd the attempts be- 
gan. The engineers went to their hazardous task 
of working under fire, which is harder than shoot- 
ing back at your enemy. They stealthily managed 
to put a footbridge across the river, but when they 
started to build another across the canal, they met 
a hurricane of machine-gun and rifle fire, while the 
German guns concentrating upon them forced their 
retirement. The engineers are a patient and tire- 
less lot, who can wait until a burst of fire has died 
down and then start work again. By 2 a.m. they 
had two footbridges across the canal. When a small 
column of infantry tried to cross, they were blown 
back by the enemy, who had evidently been watch- 
ing for the target to appear. The infantry dug in 



VICTORY 603 

between the canal and the river. This much was 
gained at all events. 

At 9.30 the next morning came a message from 
the Corps, directing that " the crossing will be ef- 
fected regardless of loss, as the movement of the 
entire Army depends upon this crossing, and it must 
be done at once." 

There was nothing to do, then, but cross or die 
in the effort, without waiting for darkness. All 
available artillery was asked to pound the east bank 
of the Meuse until eight in the evening. At four in 
the afternoon the 5th started to lay a pontoon bridge 
across at Clery-le-Petit, where the river was no feet 
wide and 10 feet deep. The pontoons were not 
blown up by shell-fire quite as fast as they were put 
in the water. Therefore the bridge was finally com- 
pleted. Under a barrage of artillery fire two bat- 
talions made a rush to cross the bridge. The Ger- 
man artillery began tearing them to pieces at the 
same time that it was tearing the bridge to pieces. 

Happily the 5th was not putting all its eggs in 
one basket. At 6.20 another party, without any 
artillery preparation, succeeded in crossing the canal 
as well as the river at Brieulles, and once on the 
other side would not be budged from maintaining 
their narrow bridgehead in face of the plunging fire 
from the heights. Just below Brieulles, another 
battalion, which was also favored, no doubt, by the 



6o4 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

German attention being drawn to the fragile targets 
of the pontoons, in the most unostentatious but ex- 
peditious manner got across by using rafts, duck- 
boards, poles, and ropes, and by swimming. The 
water of the river was bitter cold, but we were win- 
ning the war, and every soldier in the Meuse-Ar- 
gonne was used to being wet by rain. This sopping 
battalion made a lodgment in Chatillon Wood, and 
kept warm during the night by cleaning the Germans 
out of it. 

It appeared at midnight that the whole division 
would have to swing round to cross the river by way 
of Brieulles; but before morning the left brigade, 
on the north, put pontoons over successfully during 
the night, and crossed a battalion; for the Aces of 
the 5th had taken the Corps order to heart. Never 
let it be said that the 5th was holding up the entire 
Army — if it really were. General Hines was a very 
taciturn man, as I have remarked; and the Army 
staff had studied foreign methods in propaganda. 

By 8 a.m. there were artillery bridges over the 
Meuse at Brieulles. Such speed as this ought to be 
encouraged by calling for more speed. Two bri- 
gades had detachments across the river. The next 
thing was to join up the bridgeheads and take Dun- 
sur-Meuse, and this immediately. General Ely, of 
square jaw and twinkling blue eyes, did not care who 
took it, so it was taken. 



VICTORY 605 

" Take Dun-sur-Meuse and the hill north of 292, 
and from there go to the east," he told one brigade. 
" Do not wait for the other brigade. Keep pushing 
up with that one battalion, and take that place." 

" Keep shoving your battalions through," he told 
the other brigade. " Don't stop, but go through 
Dun. Take the shelling, and take the machine-gun 
fire, and push things along. You are to go to Dun 
unless the other fellow gets there first." 

Thus Dun and the heights were taken that day, 
and the 5th fully established on the east bank of the 
Meuse. It was an accomplishment admirable In 
courage and skill. 

The spirit of rivalry shown by the battalions rush- 
ing for Dun was that of all the divisions sweeping 
down the apron of the reverse slopes of the whale- 
back toward the river. This apron was not a smooth 
descent, but undulating, broken by hills, ravines, and 
woods, where machine-gunners could take cover and 
force deployment. In many instances advancing was 
no mere maneuver. The 89th ran into strong oppo- 
sition on the heights overlooking the Meuse, and in 
common with all other divisions could not answer 
the enem> artillery, as we did not want to fire into 
the inhabited villages on the other bank. The 2nd 
met strong resistance on the 4th, which required 
organizing a regular attack; but, of course, it went 
through. Lejeune was not a man to consider any 



606 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

other result, or his men inclined to waste time when 
the ist Division was waiting in the rear to take the 
2nd's place if it so much as stubbed its toe. As we 
know, on critical occasions, the 2nd did not worry 
about casualties. Its casualty list, whose total was 
the heaviest of any division in France, for the final 
drive was over four thousand. 

Enemy resistance varied with the mood of indi- 
vidual units. A few answered the professional call 
and the call of fatalism not to miss an opportunity 
to turn their machine-guns upon our advancing 
troops. Others asked only to escape or to surrender. 
The harder we pressed, the larger would be this 
class. Our own mood was that of the soldier who 
has his enemy in flight. Every blow was another 
argument for an armistice, and a further assurance 
of an early passage home. The elation of the chase 
eliminated the sense of fatigue. Abandoned guns, 
rifles, bombs, trench mortars, worn-out automobiles 
and trucks, all the stage properties of retreat were 
in the wake of that German army whose mighty or- 
ganization had held the world in a fearful awe. 
We were passing through a region where houses 
were intact and only a few shells had fallen in the 
course of our advance. Villagers in a wondering 
delirium of joy were watching the groups of Ger- 
man prisoners, too weary for any emotion except 
a sense of relief, of officers with long faces and a 



VICTORY 607 

glazed, despairing look in their eyes, officers who 
were indifferent, and occasional ones in whom the 
defiance of Prussian militarism still bore itself in 
ineffectual superciliousness; and watching these 
strange Americans going and coming on their er- 
rands, and the passage of our troops, guns, and trans- 
port in an urgent procession which thought of noth- 
ing except getting ahead. 

The Commander-in-Chief having on the 5th 
directly urged all possible speed on the left toward 
the Meuse at Sedan, which was of course the farthest 
objective from our starting-point, those mouth- 
watering veteran hounds in reserve of the First and 
Fifth Corps at last had their leashes removed, and 
joined the pack in full cry. Taking the place of the 
78th, the men of the 42nd knew now that there was 
a rainbow's end, and they meant that it should go 
to none other than the Rainbow Division. March 
is hardly the word for their speed; gallop is a better 
one. On the 8th they had reached Wadelincourt, 
a suburb across the river from Sedan, in their won- 
derful dash. Their Rainbow ambition having con- 
sidered all northern France as their objective, they 
found that they were out of the American sector, 
and accordingly must be " side-slipped." The 
French took Sedan. There was historical fitness in 
the French poilus, in their faded blue, being the first 
troops to enter that town, where a French disaster, 



6o8 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

due to a travesty of imperial leadership, had glori- 
fied the Hohenzollern dynasty, which was now a 
travesty with its armies in dissolution. 

The ist, swinging over to the left but still re- 
maining with the Fifth Corps, had a long march 
before reaching the front of the 8oth, which it re- 
lieved. When it received the word to go, it devel- 
oped a speed which was sufficient reason for its being 
in at the finish, without depending upon its record in 
previous actions. Our pioneer veterans had two days 
and two nights in line, advancing ten miles. Then 
they were " squeezed out " by the " side-slipping " 
of the 42nd from before Sedan. From the morn- 
ing of November 5 th, when the call came to them, 
until midnight of November 7th-8th, their units had 
fought for forty-eight hours, and marched from 
thirty to forty-five miles. Will the racehorse 2nd 
please take note of this? 

If the Arrows of the 32nd, the third of the vet- 
eran divisions in reserve, had had to go home without 
being in the final drive, when the 42nd was in it, our 
army staff would have been even more unpopular 
than it was. They, too, had this chance. As the 
Third Corps' front broadened with its advance over 
the heights on the other side of the river they took 
over a portion of the sector of the 15th French 
Colonials, where they were driving the enemy in 
most uncivil fashion when the flag fell. 



VICTORY 609 

The Texans of the 90th had to swing their right 
flank to the river bank in liaison with the flank of 
the 5th, and keep firm liaison with the 89th on their 
left. They faced very resolute fire from the other 
bank in their bridge-building, which had to be done 
under most troublesome conditions after some 
expensive reconnoitering, in which the Texans did 
not allow artillery or machine-gun fire to interfere 
with their pioneering audacity. On the 9th they had 
orders to cross. That night they went over their 
new bridge under a pitiless fire. While one detach- 
ment went into Stenay, which lies under a bluff* 
where it had a busy time in cleaning up the town* 
the other detachment pressed on into Baalon Wood. 

Meanwhile the Kansans and Missourians of the 
89th had been preparing, at the same time with the 
2nd of the Fifth Corps, to cross and take the heights 
of Inor. As soon as their outposts reached the bank y 
their patrols had begun swimming the river under 
machine-gun fire. They were assigned some German 
pontoons, which they transformed into rafts. The 
first was rowed across ; the others were pulled across 
with ropes. Seventy-five men being crowded on each 
raft, they put one whole battalion on the opposite 
bank while footbridges were being smashed by the 
enemy artillery as fast as the engineers could build 
them. The battalion, having taken over a hundred 
prisoners, pressed on to Autreville. It goes without 



610 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

saying that the 2nd had also effected a crossing-^ 
and under equally trying conditions. 

Every battalion over the Meuse, every rod of 
ground gained, was considered a further argument 
for the Germans to accept the terms of the armistice 
now in their hands. Until the word to cease fire 
came, the Army would go on fighting; at dawn on 
the nth, when the German delegates were signing 
their names on Marshal Foch's train our Second 
Army, weak in numbers and strong in heart, began 
carrying out the orders that had been planned in 
the Saint-Mihiel sector, where several of our veteran 
divisions had been resting after being expended in 
the Meuse-Argonne, and we had the 7th and 88th 
among our new divisions. On the right was the 
92nd, colored, National Army, nearest of all our 
troops to the former German frontier, who were 
the first to cross it, I understand, in their successful 
charge. To say that the 28th and the 33rd were 
also in the action is sufficient. They were going 
ahead, and the German infantry was resisting with 
machine-gun fire which caused numerous casualties, 
and the German artillery was responding with a 
heavy bombardment at some points, when word was 
flashed through from Marshal Foch to our General 
Headquarters, and through to the Second Army, and 
out to the regiments and battalions, that at 1 1 a.m. 
hostilities would cease. 



VICTORY 611 

The Second Army advance was immediately 
stopped. Everywhere east of the Meuse our troops 
were advancing on the morning of the nth. The 
8ist was engaged on the flank of the veteran 26th, 
which had been ceaselessly pushing the enemy over 
the hills since November 1st, and was now approach- 
ing the plain. The 79th, after taking the Borne de 
Cornouiller, had faced round in a rapid and brilliant 
maneuver, pressing over the rim of the bowl from 
the Grande Montagne and from Belleu Wood, in 
whose fox-holes three of our divisions had suffered, 
and moving down into the plain had taken Dam- 
villers, and was now storming the last of the three 
hills between its line and the plain of the Woevre. 
The men were wrathful at being stopped. They 
wanted to finish the job: to take the last of the 
hills. 

At many points where our infantry units were 
far beyond our communications and infiltrating 
around hills and through woods, it took some time 
to reach the rapidly moving advance detachments 
with the news that they were to cease firing and go 
no farther. Particularly was this true in front of 
the Fifth Corps, whose skirmishers, having just 
crossed the river, were taking the bit in their teeth. 
A few elements were still engaging the German rear- 
guard at eleven, unaware that the war was over, 
while on all the remainder of the front from Switzer- 



612 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

land to Holland there was silence for the first time 
in four years — and the mills of hell had ceased 
grinding. 

Two of the divisions which had been in line on 
the first day of the Meuse-Argonne battle were in 
line on the last. Two others which had helped 
break the old trench system on September 26th, the 
37th and the 91st, were to see the finish far from 
our army family, on the plains of Belgium. Isolated 
in an odd Flemish world of level fields broken by 
canals, the two were attached to different French 
corps in that Allied force of British and French and 
Belgians under the Belgian King, and under the 
direct command of General Degoutte, which had dis- 
engaged Ypres, recovered Ostend, Bruges, Roulers, 
and Courtrai, when on October 31st our men joined 
in that tide of victory which was soon to flow into 
Brussels itself. In three days they made eight miles 
against irregular rearguard action. In taking the 
low ridge commanding the Scheldt, they were under a 
heavy artillery reaction of the Germans in protect- 
ing the retreat across the river. The Ohioans on 
November 2nd, in face of the concentrations of gun- 
fire, were able to slip small detachments across on 
bridges improvised from tree-trunks and timbers 
taken from shattered houses, and eventually, that 
night, to pass over several battalions on a temporary 



VICTORY 613 

footbridge; the 91st and the French divisions were 
unsuccessful in reaching the other bank except by 
this one bridge. The Pacific Coast men, with their 
usual intrepidity, were planning to swim the river, 
but after three days of continued advance, which 
included the capture of the large town of Audenarde, 
they and the Ohioans were given a rest by the corps 
commands. On the 10th they were put in line again, 
but they did not overtake the line pursuing the re- 
treating enemy before his capitulation. 

Some American units, besides the 27th and 30th 
Divisions with the British, had been isolated from 
the first from the American family. American hos- 
pitals in base towns on both the British and French 
fronts were an evidence, from the days of our neu- 
trality, of that work of war which knows no national 
allegiance. Volunteer ambulance sections, maintain- 
ing the traditions of the American Field Service, con- 
tinued to the end to serve with French divisions; 
and indeed, many of the former volunteers who had 
preferred to prepare for commissions in the French 
army might be come upon unexpectedly in the hori- 
zon blue uniform. Engineer troops for which our 
Allies had made an early request might be buried in 
obscure parts of the front, to come to light only in 
the shadow of an emergency which, as at Cambrai 
and in the German March offensive, turned engineer 
troops into combatants; or again, as our own de- 



614 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

mands grew, to return to our own fold. Air squad- 
rons, as well as individual aviators, served in valiant 
anonymity on Allied fronts, in many cases never 
seeing the American front, which yet wanted for 
aviation. So wide was the dispersion of Americans 
throughout France that it is safe to say that hardly 
a single commune of the country has gone without 
sight of the soldier from overseas. In due time the 
far-flung legions would all have come home to an 
integral army; but the problem of keeping in touch 
with units which believed themselves lost to the sight 
of their comrades was not a simple one, and yet 
a problem that must be faced. How was the motor 
park, isolated in French barracks at Epinal, or the 
forestry unit in the Jura or the Pyrenees, to be as- 
sured that somewhere in the inner circles of 
hierarchy its faithful service was being noted and 
appreciated? 

Most isolated of all, though they received due 
meed of honor from the French with whom they 
served, were certain colored regiments. Recruited 
from various National Guard organizations in 
northern States, they had arrived in a training area 
in France after a usual period of service as labor 
troops in the S. O. S., and were formed into a provi- 
sional 93rd Division, which was not, however, to be 
assembled. In the spring the regiments were assigned 
to various French divisions for trench service, at the 



VICTORY 615 

request of the French staff, which had developed 
long experience with colored troops in many African 
campaigns. For this service the Americans were 
equipped throughout with French mustard-colored 
khaki uniforms, French rifles, packs, gas masks, and 
helmets, which still further accentuated their isola- 
tion. The varying fortunes of trench warfare in 
the Argonne and about Saint-Mihiel seasoned their 
experience for a due part in the repulse of the last 
German offensive, and in the offensive begun by 
General Gouraud's army west of the Argonne, at 
the same time with our attack to the east. With- 
drawn with their divisions after a few days of ad- 
vance which counted them as " expended," the regi- 
ments were sent to recuperate in the Vosges, whence 
they started on the short march to the Rhine after 
the armistice. 

We know how, in framing the armistice terms, as 
one after another strong demand was included, an 
apprehension developed in certain Allied quarters 
lest the Germans, with such a large army still in 
being, might become desperate and continue the war. 
When one read the terms, which surrendered the 
German navy and placed us in command of the Rhine 
bridgeheads, he knew how deep the two-edged sword 
had cut, and that the Allies had power in their hands 
to force complete submission to their will. It was a 



6i6 OUR GREATEST BATTLE 

skillful and wise peace, bringing an end to the blood- 
shed and the agony. 

Only those who considered it to their honor or 
their profit could have wished to fight all the way to 
Berlin. The thought in the mind of every soldier 
was: " I still live; I shall not have to go under fire 
again;" in the mind of every relative of a soldier: 
" He is still alive." Through all the celebrations to 
tome, it was a thought dominant in subconsciousness, 
if not publicly expressed. To some of our own new- 
comers, perhaps, who had not yet been in action, 
there was human disappointment that they had ar- 
rived too late; though our veterans and the war- 
weary veterans of our Allies might tell them that 
they were fortunate in what they had escaped. Per- 
haps, too, certain of our officers, who had worked 
toward the vision of the spring campaign, when our 
recuperated divisions would be supported by the 
enormous quantity of munitions from home, and all 
our branches would be fully equipped, may have 
felt that they had been robbed of professional fulfill- 
ment. Not until spring would we have been able to 
undertake another offensive against determined re- 
sistance. On November i ith we had only two fresh 
divisions in reserve; we were depending upon green 
replacements, and our hospitals were full. If we 
had come late into the war, we had given the full 
measure of our strength in the final stage. 



VICTORY 617 

The forming of the new Third Army of Occupa- 
tion under Major-General Joseph T. Dickman,, 
drawn from our veteran divisions in a favorable 
position for the movement, and its long tour of 
police duty, is no more in the province of this book 
than the many journeys which the author made after 
the armistice: up and down the Rhine; into Brussels, 
to see the people welcome back their King; over the 
Ypres, the Somme, and the Verdun battlefields, as 
well as our own; along roads which had been for 
four years in sound of the guns, now silent; among 
our camps where our soldiers in the dreary, long - , 
cold nights were impatiently marking time until their 
homegoing; through the Services of Supply, where 
I saw that vast machine we had built reversed, to 
the ports, where the tide of our soldiery was flow- 
ing outward instead of inward — the thought ever up- 
permost being that humanity might learn from this 
most monstrous example of war's folly how to avoid 
its repetition. 



INDEX 



Ace of Diamonds Division (see 
5th Division). 

Aincreville, 571, 575, 581, 
584. m 

Aire river, 10, 51, 58, 60, 65, 
7i, 73, 143, 168, 173, 175, 176, 
*77> 1 78, 179, 180, 181, 182, 
184, 187, 189, 190, 203, 210, 
218, 266, 272, 273, 274, 276, 
277, 279, 280, 281, 284, 286, 
293, 294, 297, 298, 299, 300, 
303, 309, 313. 315, 321, 324. 
325, 330, 336, 343, 348, 361, 
365, 399, 5i8, 523, 541, 542, 
546, 552, 553- * 

Aisne river, 53, 55, 56, 57, 249, 
250, 251. 

Alamo, battle of the, 261. 

Alexander, Major-General Rob- 

ert ' 5 4" . 
All-American Division (see 

82nd Division) . 
Allen, Major-General Henry 

T., 572, 596, 597- . 
Allenby, General Sir Edmund, 

3- 
Alsace, 9, 10. 
" America in France," 14. 
American Legion, 473. 
American Library Association, 

507. 
Amiens, n, 248. 
Andevanne, 597. 
Annapolis, Naval Academy, 

4*3- 
Antietam, battle of, 17. 
Appomattox campaign, 17, 403, 

577. 
Apremont, 180, 310. 
Argonne Forest, 8, 10, 11, 13, 

14, 22, 24, 25, 26, 36, 49, 51, 

619 



55, 58, 61, 63, 65, 73, 80, 96, 
142, 143, 144, 168, 169, 170, 
171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 
178, 179, 181, 184, 190, 195, 
204, 222, 244, 249, 251, 267, 
279, 281, 285, 287, 288, 291, 
293, 295, 309, 310, 311, 312, 
313, 3i4, 320, 321, 322, 323, 
324, 336, 361, 583, 615. 

Argonne offensive {see Battle, 
19 1 5). 

Arietal farm, 296. 

Armentieres, 3. 

Army: 

American, First, 31, 357, 
358, 360, 374, 515. 
Second, 357, 358, 362, 610, 

611. 
Third, 617. 
Freqch, Fourth, 24, 26, 36, 50, 
72, 79, 96, 134, 249, 542, 
583, 598. 
Fifth, 134, 251. 
Tenth, 47, 134, 270. 

Arras, 3. 

Arrow Division {see 32nd Divi- 
sion ) . 

Atlantic Coast Division (see 
79th Division). 

Atterbury, Brigadier-General 
W. W., 391, 405, 406. 

Attigny, 264. 

Auberive, 251. 

Audenarde, 613. 

Austerlitz, battle of, 388. 

Australian Corps, 48, 70, 148, 
223, 226, 227. 

Australian 3rd Division, 231. 

Australian 5th Divison, 231. 

Autreville, 609. 

Avocourt, 61, 66. 



620 



INDEX 



Baalon Wood, 609. 

Baccarat, 519. 

Bamford, Brigadier-General F. 

E., 564. 
Bantheville, 531, 535, 574. 5«3. 
Bantheville Wood, 519, 525, 535, 

540, 57i, 573, 583, 594, 596. 
Bapaume, 227. 
Bar-le-Duc, 26, 27, 75. 
Barricourt, 551, 575, 594, 595- 
Battle of: 

1914: Le Cateau, 248. 

the Marne, 5, 11, 14, 16, 

592. 
Ypres, 183. 
1915: the Argonne, 66, 195, 
198. 
Champagne, 13. 
Loos, 13. 
1916: the Somme, 13, 19, 22, 
24, 32, 77, 105, 225, 
570. 
Verdun (German of- 
fensive), 8, 14, 65, 
66, 70, 109, 148, 149, 
340, 349, 352, 356, 

485, 554, 555, 569- 
Verdun (French of- 
fensive), 355, 569. 

1917: Cambrai, 225, 613. 

Champagne, 13, 24, 77, 
356. 

Passchendaele, 13. 
1918: the Somme (German 
March offensive), 7, 
8, 15, 47, "°, 225, 
230, 359, 383, 576, 
592, 613. 

Seicheprey, 60, 560. 

Cantigny, 268, 360, 363. 

the Marne (German 
May offensive), 15, 
46, 47, 250, 252, 325, 
360, 383, 410, 473, 

486, 537, 558, 569, 
576, 59i, 592- 

Champagne (German 
July offensive), 55, 
325, 519, 615. 



Battle of: 

1918: the Marne (Allied July 
" counter-offensive "), 
1, 15, 30, 39, 46, 47, 
48, 52, 56, 68, 97, 112, 
250, 252, 268, 270, 271, 
361, 365, 380,383,486, 
49i, 519, 560. 

Frapelle, 526. 

the Somme (Allied of- 
fensive, August 8th), 
3, 48, 69, 97, 226. 

Juyigny, 47, 270. 

Saint-Mihiel, 1, 2, 3, 4, 
13, 21, 24, 26, 28, 30, 

3i, 35, 36, 38, 39, 45, 
46, 47, 68, 69, 77, 96, 
105, in, 135, 268, 
271, 280, 361, 362, 
383, 520, 560, 561, 
572. 
Flanders, August 28th, 

224, 236. 
Flanders, September 

28th, 134. 
Cambrai-Saint-Quentin, 
September 29th, 29, 
134, 223-243. 
Rheims, September 

30th, 134, 251. 
Blanc-Mont, October 

3rd, 134, 249-265. 
Le Cateau, October 

8th, 244, 247. 
Flanders, October 14th, 

244, 612, 613. 
Valenciennes, October 
17th, 245, 247, 248. 
1919: Metz, plan of, 1, 2, 75. 
Baulny, 188, 189. 
Bayonville-et-Chennery, 591. 
Belfort, 9, 351. 
Belgrade, 516. 
Bell, Major-General George, 

69, 151. 
Bell, Major-General J. Frank- 
lin, 421. 
Belleau Wood, 257, 380, 398, 
558. 



INDEX 



621 



Bellejoyeuse farm, 544, 545, 546. 

Belleu Wood, 540, 558, 562, 
563, 567, 568, 584, 611. 

Berlin, 397, 578, 616. 

Berthelot, General, 134, 251. 

Bethincourt, 151. 

Bethincourt Wood, 195. 

Beuge Wood, 210, 220, 326. 

Binarville, 174, 175, 310. 

Blanc-Mont, 249, 257, 258, 259. 

Blue Ridge Division (see Both 
Division). 

Blois, 393, 394, 449, 450, 451, 
454, 455, 456, 457, 45.8, 499. 

Blue and Grey Division (see 
29th Division). 

Bony, 223, 238, 241, 242. 

Bordeaux, 397, 399, 402, 403. 

Borne de Cornouiller (see Hill 
378). 

Boulasson brook, 288. 

Boult Forest, 293, 321. 

Boureuilles, 58, 60. 

Bourgogne Wood, 175, 321, 542, 
544, 545, 546, 549, 5&3, 59°. 
592, 593, 598- 

Bouzon Wood, 177. 

Brabant, 350. 

Brancourt, 246. 

Brent, Chaplain Charles H., 
511. 

Brest, 391, 399, 400, 401, 402. 

Brieulles, 143, 147, 154, 155, 159, 
160, 163, 167, 324, 337, 338, 
34i, 343, 344, 345, 3^5, 527> 
539, 57i, 575, 58i, 584, 598, 
603, 604. 

Brieulles Wood, 164, 165. 

Briey, 11, 13. 

Brown, Brigadier-General Pres- 
ton, 537, 538. 

Bruges, 516, 612. 

Brussels, 591, 612, 617. 

Buck, Major-General Beau- 
mont B., 324. 

Bullard, Lieutenant-General 
Robert L., 30, 55, 61, 355, 358, 
362-365, 371. 

Bull Run, battle of, 83, 359. 



Burgundy, 403. 

Busigny, 246. 

Buzancy, 1, 10, 11, 124, 127, 542^ 

Caesar, 84, 349, 597. 

Cambrai, 134, 223, 244 (and 

see Battle, 1917, 1918). 
Cameron, Majoc- General 

George H., 30, 65, 194. 
Cantigny, battle of, 268, 360, 

363- 
Champagne, 8, 10, 40, 196, 250, 

251, 256 (and see Battle* 

1915, 1 917, 191 8). 
Champigneulle, 550. 
Chancellorsville, battle of, xj, 

592, 593- 
Charlevaux ravine, 174. 
Charpentry, 187, 188, 189. 
Chateau-Thierry, 1, 15, 21, 55,, 

449, 586 (and see Battle, 

1918, Marne). 
Chateau-Chehery, 282, 283, 284, 

285, 294, 298. 
Chatillon ridge, 318, 515, 519, 

520, 521, 529, 540, 551. 
Chatillon Wood, 604. 
Chaume Wood, 351, 353, 354. 
Chaumont (General Headquar- 
ters), 182, 373, 379, 380, 391, 

392, 394, 404, 437, 442, 610. 
Chemin des Dames, 560. 
Chene Sec Wood, 202, 276, 277, 

294- 
Chene Tondu (hill), 168, 175, 

178, 179, 180, 181. 
Chenes Wood, 558. 
Cheppy, 185, 186. 
Cheppy Wood, 66, 195, 196, 199, 
Cherbourg, 397. 
Chevieres, 320, 542. 
Cierges, 202, 210, 211, 212, 267, 

275. 
Cierges Wood, 200, 201, 202. 
Civil War, 159, 428, 437, 438, 

459, 487, 497- 
Clairs Chenes Wood, 537, 538, 

540. 
Clermont (-en-Argonne), 75. 



-622 



INDEX 



Clery-Ie-Petit, 598, 603. 
Cold Harbor, battle of, 267, 273. 
Consenvoye, 350. 
Consenvoye Wood, 352. 
Cornay, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 

292, 293, 298, 314. 
Corps : 

American, First, 30, 65, 67, 73, 

168, 179, 197, 272, 296, 

324, 359, 362, 583, 584, 

592, 593, 595, 598, 607. 

Second, 134, 223, 224, 228, 

230, 231, 244, 245. 
Third, 30, 65, 67, 70, 72, 73, 
147, 153, 157, 158, 162, 
166, 167, 168, 268, 324, 
332, 333, 365, 37 1 , 553, 
563, 575, 583, 584, 596, 
597, 598, 600, 602, 608. 
Fifth, 30, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 
155, 160, 194, 197, 207, 
213, 296, 303, 324, 365, 
520, 583, 584, 587, 592, 
594, 595, 596, 597, 607, 
608, 609, 611. 
British, Third, 236, 239. 
Thirteenth, 246, 248. 
Australian, 48, 70, 148, 223, 
226, 227, 230, 241, 242, 

243. 
Second Colonial, 584. 
French, Ninth, 556. 

Seventeenth, 348, 351, 352, 

554- 
Twenty-first, 257, 262. 
Courtrai, 612. 
Cote d'Or, 403. 
Counter-offensive {see Battle, 

iqi8). 
Crepion, 557, 562, 567. 
Conkhite, Major-General Ad- 

elbert, 68, 153. 
Cuba (see Spanish War). 
Cuisy, 155, 162, 217, 218, 219. 
Cuisy Wood, 140, 217. 
Cunel, 333, 337, 338, 344, 3^5, 

527. 
Cunel Wood, 326, 328, 329, 330, 

344- 



Dame Marie ridge, 304, 306, 

515,. 518, 523, 524, 525, 540. 

Damvillers, 611. 

Dans les Vaux valley, 354. 

Degoutte, General, 612. 

Delville Wood, 570. 

Dickman, Major-General Joseph 
T., 362, 583, 587, 617. 

Dijon, 409. 

Divisions, American: 

ist, 30, 46, 164, 192, 203, 250, 
267-279, 294-308, 313, 314, 
315, 324, 325, 326, 340, 343, 
348, 362, 365, 371, 518, 520, 
523, 526, 534, 556, 564, 584, 
585, 586, 590, 594, 595, 596, 
606, 608. 

2ND, 30, 134, 164, 249, 250- 

262, 264, 325, 380, 522, 526, 
537, 560, 583, 584, 585, 586, 
590, 59i, 592, 594, 595, 605, 
606, 608, 609, 610. 

3D, 47, 164, 222, 324-332, 333, 
336, 337, 344, 345, 515, 520, 
526, 529, 534, 536-539- 

4TH, 47, 48, 65, 67, 68, 69, 
147, 148, 152, 159, 161-165, 
217, 267, 325, 332, 334, 340- 
348, 37i, 526, 527, 537, 597- 

5™, 325, 339, 515, 526-536, 

537, 539, 545, 57*, 574, 575, 

583, 586, 589, 590, 598, 601- 
605, 609. 

7TH, 610. 

26th, 46, 60, 268, 559-570, 

584, 599, 611. 
27TH, 106, 223-248, 613. 
28TH, 47, 48, 55-59, 65, 168, 

I t>9, 175-185, 218, 266, 267, 
273, 276, 279, 280-287, 290, 
291, 294, 298, 310, 610. 

29TH, 340, 349, 350, 351-354, 
553, 557-562, 568, 569, 570, 
601. 

30TH, 63, 203, 223-248, 302, 
613. 

32ND, 47, 56, 64, 202, 203, 213, 
214, 266, 270-279, 293-299, 
302-306, 314, 315, 316, 324, 



INDEX 623 

327, 330, 515, 518, 519, 520. 212. 213, 267, 271, 275, 

523-526, 529, 535, 556, 572, 303, 305, 306, 556, 612, 

584, 586, 596, 608. 613. 

33D, 47, 48, 69, 70, 147-152, 92ND, 50, 168, 6lO. 

153, 154. 156, 158, l6l, 176, 93D, 50, 614, 615. 

197, 267, 349-354, 553, 556, Divisions: 

557, 601, 610. Australian, 3d, 231. 

35TH, 47, 51, 59, 60, 61, 62, 5th, 231. 

65, 168, 179, 181, 184-193, French, 15th Colonial, 608. 

197, 198, 202, 267, 268, 271, German, 1st Guard, 196. 

273, 280. 5th Guard, 140, 199, 205, 

36TH, 249, 260-265. 271, 273. 

37TH, 51, 62, 63, 65, 68, 161, 52nd, 271. 

I 94, I 97, 200, 202, 203-213, Doherty, Chaplain Francis B., 

215, 217, 220, 267, 271, 275, 511. 

303, 333, 612, 613. Douaumont, Fort, 71, 355, 569. 

41ST, 64, 214. Doyen, Brigadier-General, 379. 

42ND, 46, 68, 302, 308, 318, Duncan, Major-General George 

515, 5i8, 519-523, 524, 528, B., 291, 552. 

529, 551, 584, 585, 589, 593, Dun-sur-Meuse, 604, 605. 

607, 608. 

77TH, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, Eastern Coast Division (see 

61, 62, 65, 68, 168-175, 176, ygth Division). 

179, 181, 197, 204, 291, 309- Edwards, Major-General Clar- 

315, 3i8, 319, 323, 541, 583, ence R., 540, 565. 

592, 593- Elbe river, 404. 

78TH, 321, 322, 540-552, 583, Ely, Major-General Hanson E., 

585, 592, 593, 607. 534, 535, 536, 596, 598, 604, 
79TH, 51, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 605. 

162, 194, 196, 213-222, 267, Emont Wood, 210, 211. 

324, 325, 333, 556, 561, 568, Epieds, 560. 

569, 570, 584, 589, 599, 600, Epinal, 9, 614. 

601, 611. Epinonville, 200, 201. 

8oth, 65, 68, 69, 147, 151, 153- Esnes, 162, 195, 214. 

162, 165, 280, 324, 329, 331, Essen trench, 255, 257. 

332-339, 340, 344, 345, 527, Etain, 1, 24. 

583, 593, 608. Etraye Wood, 558, 559, 562, 

81ST, 611. 599. 

82ND, 191, 197, 281-293, 294, Exermont, 168, 190, 191. 

298, 309, 313, 314, 315-319, Exermont ravine, 143, 190, 202, 

540, 55i, 552, 59o. 267, 271, 273, 274. 
88th, 610. 

89TH, 59, 525, 556, 571-574, Falkenhayn, General, 8, 340. 

583, 585, 589, 594, 595, 596, Farnsworth, Major - General 

605, 609. Charles S., 62. 

90TH, 536, 571-575, 582, 583, Fays Woods, 164, 342, 343, 344, 

586, 589, 596, 597, 598, 602, 345. 

609. Fismes, 56, 524. 

91ST, 61, 62, 194, 196-203, 205, Fismettes, 56. 



624 



INDEX 



Flanders, 8, 89, 589 (and see 

Battle, 191 8). 
Fleville, 266, 274, 276, 278, 279, 

281, 282, 288, 290, 297, 316. 
Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 3, 7, 

15, 17. 36, 40, 48, 72, 96, 134. 

231, 255, 256, 370, 373, 375, 

581, 587, 610. 
Fontaine-aux-Charmes ravine, 

175- 

Forest farm, 264. 

Forest Wood, 343, 347, 537. 

Forges brook, 68, 149, 150, 154, 
162. 

Forges Wood, 69, 149, 150, 350, 
556. 

Franco-Prussian War, 10. 

Frapelle, battle of, 526. 

Frederick the Great, 579. 

Freya line, 143, 518, 571, 574, 
597- 

Funston, Major-General Fred- 
erick, 60, 421. 

General Headquarters (see 

Chaumont). 
Gesnes, 143, 202, 267, 275, 276, 

277, 278, 294, 302, 304. 
Gettysburg, battle of, 210, 

478. 
Gievres, 391, 407, 409, 410. 
Gillemont farm, 230. 
G o e t h a 1 s , Major-General 

George W., 376, 381, 382. 
Gommecourt, 24. 
Gondrecourt, 307. 
Gouraud, General, 249, 251, 

615. 
Gouy, 235, 238, 240. 
Grand Carre farm, 518, 528, 

534- 
Grande Montagne Wood, 352, 

553. 558, 559, 568, 599, 611. 
Grandpre, 293, 300, 309, 310, 

314, 315, 320, 321, 322, 518, 

540, 541, 542, 543, 544, 546, 

549, 55o. 
Grant, General Ulysses S., 84, 

349, 367, 37i, 403. 



Haan, Major-General William 
G., 270. 

Haig, Field Marshal Sir Doug- 
las, 47, 223, 249. 

Halles, 598. 

Harbord, Major-General James 

G -y 254, 376-390, 39 1 , 394" 

399, 412, 457. 
Haucourt, 215. 
Hill 180 (near Cornay), 281, 

282, 283, 287, 294. 
Hill 180 (near Grandpre), 544, 

546, 548. 
Hill 182 (near Saint-Juvin), 

318, 551. 
Hill 204 (near Grandpre), 544, 

546. 
Hill 212 (near Villers-devant- 

Dun), 598. 
Hill 223 (near Chatel-Che- 

hery), 282, 283, 287, 289, 294. 
Hill 227 (near Brieulles), 160. 
Hill 239 (near Gesnes), 275. 
Hill 240 (the Montrefagne), 

271, 274. 
Hill 242 (Romagne Wood), 

521. 
Hill 244 (near Chatel-Che- 

hery), 284, 285. 
Hill 250 (near Ogons Wood), 

326, 327, 328, 329. 
Hill 253 (near Romagne), 330. 
Hill 255 (near Gesnes), 277, 

303, 305- 
Hill 256 (near Ivoiry), 208. 
Hill 260 (near Romagne), 531, 

534- 
Hill 263 (Little Wood), 299, 

300, 302. 
Hill 268 (near Nantillois), 220. 
Hill 269 (Money Wood), 294, 

295, 296, 297, 299, 302. 
Hill 271 (near Cunel), 531, 534. 
Hill 272 (Little Wood), 299, 

300, 301, 302. 
Hill 274 (near Nantillois), 221. 
Hill 281 (near Brieulles), 160. 
Hill 288 (Dame Marie ridge), 

305, 521, 524. 



INDEX 



625 



Hill 29+ (near Montfaucon), 

218. 
Hill 295 (near Cuisy), 164. 
Hill 297 (near Pultiere Wood), 

538. 
Hill 299 (near Pultiere Wood), 

347, 537, 538. 
Hill 360 (Ormont Wood), 558, 

563, 564, 566, 568. 
Hill 370 (Grande Montagne 

Wood), 553. 
Hill 378 (Borne de Cornouil- 

ler), 71, 73, 157, 158, 165, 

166, 213, 340, 341, 345, 349, 

35 1 , 352, 353, 354, 53*, 536, 

553, 556, 558, 584, 589, 599, 

600, 601, 611. 
Hindenburg, Field-Marshal, 

227, 469. 
Hindenburg line, 4, 14, 134, 

223, 227, 228, 229, 232, 239, 

240, 241, 243, 249. 
Hines, Major-General John L., 

61, 67, 162, 340, 342, 355, 371- 

373, 583, 587, 597, 604. 

Illinois Division (see 33rd 
Division). 

Inor, 609. 

Iron Division (see 28th Divi- 
sion). 

Is-sur-Tille, 391, 409, 410. 

Italian offensive, 1918, 3. 

Ivoiry, 208, 209. 

Jackson, Andrew, 232. 
Jackson, Stonewall, 17, 232, 332, 

367. 

Jewish Welfare Board, 506, 
507. 

Johnston, Major-General Will- 
iam H., 61. 

Joinville, 270. 

Joncourt, 241. 

Jura Mountains, 614. 

Jure Wood, 69, 149, 151, 153. 

Juvigny, battle of, 47, 270, 524, 
525- 



Kemmel Hill, 3, 324. 

Keystone Division (see 28th 
Division) . 

Kitchener, Earl, 584. 

Knights of Columbus, 506, 507. 

Knoll, 230. 

Kriemhilde line, 143, 165, 272, 
299, 3°3, 3°5, 306, 309, 3*4, 
315, 3i6, 318, 326, 333, 344, 
399, 5 l8 , 520, 521, 522, 523, 
525, 540, 550, 551, 574, 584, 
589, 590. 

Kuhn, Major-General Joseph 
E., 63, 599. 

La Boiselle, 24. 

Lai Fuon ravine, 196, 199, 204, 

205. 
Langres, printing plant, 31. 
Langres, schools, 24, 433, 442- 

446. 
Laon, 516. 
La Pallice, 402. 
La Rochelle, 402. 
La Viergette, 286. 
Leavenworth schools, 42, 122, 

182, 422, 423, 433, 436, 437, 

438, 439, 440, 44i, 442, 444, 

445, 450, 45i, 452, 453, 454, 

457, 461, 462, 464- 
Le Cateau, 223, 244, 246, 247. 
Le Catelet, 235, 238, 241. 
Lee, Robert E., 232, 349, 367, 

478. 
Lejeune, Major-General John 

A., 254, 594, 605. 
Lens, 294. 
Lewis, Major-General Edward 

M., 223. 
Liberty Division (see 77th Divi- 
sion). 
Liggett, Lieutenant-General 

Hunter, 30, 65, 355, 358-362, 

5 X 5, 5i6. 
Lightning Division (see 78th 

Division). 
Lille, 244, 322, 516. 
Lille-Metz railway, 1, 11, 13, 

124, 134, 141, 175, 215, 583. 



626 



INDEX 



Limey, 541. 

Liny, 575. 

Little Wood, 296, 299, 300. 

Loges farm, 545, 549. 

Loges Wood, 540, 542, 543, 545, 

546, 547, 548, 549, 550, 55 1 , 

552, 557, 583, 585- 
Loos (see Battle, 1915). 
Lorraine, 1, 9, 10, 47, 52, 360, 

378, 526. 
Ludendorff, General, 4, 7, 8, 

9, 14, 17, *9, "o, 227, 

230. 

MacDonald, Brigadier-General 

John B., 203. 
Macedonia campaign, 1918, 3. 
Machault, 252, 264. 
Macquincourt valley, 236, 239. 
Maistre, General, 340, 587. 
Malancourt, 124, 162, 215. 
Malancourt Wood, 195. 
Malbrouck Hill, 352. 
Maldah ridge, 300, 302. 
Malmaison, Fort, 134. 
Mamelle trench, 304, 324, 326, 

329, 330, 33i, 336, 539- 
Mangin, General, 47, 134, 270, 

367. 
March, General Peyton C, 390, 

399- 

Marcq, 292. 

Marengo, battle of, 388. 

Marne Division {see 3rd Divi- 
sion). 

Marne river, 55, 325, 326, 331, 
538 (and see Battle, 1914, 
1918). 

Marseilles, 397. 

Mars-la-Tour, 1, 24. 

Martinvaux Wood, 346. 

McClellan, General, 359. 

McDowell, General, 359. 

M c M a h o n, Major-General 
John E., 526. 

McRae, Major-General James 
H., 541. 

Meade, General, 478. 

Medeah farm, 259, 260, 262. 



Me no her, Major-General 
Charles T., 519. 

Metz, 1, 4, 9, 22, 196. 

Meuse canal, 341, 601, 602, 603. 

Meuse line, 4, 7, 243, 577. 

Meuse river, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 
17, 22, 35, 36, 49, 65, 67, 68, 
69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 80, 124, 142, 
*43, 144, 147, 148, 152, 153, 
154, 157, 162, 163, 165, 176, 
213, 222, 249, 267, 268, 295, 
322, 324, 332, 333, 341, 343, 
345, 347, 348, 349, 35<>, 35*. 
352, 354, 362, 365, 371, 399, 
527, 530, 535, 536, 537, 540, 
552, 553, 556, 563, 564, 574. 
575, 583, 586, 589, 592, 595, 
597, 598, 600, 601, 602, 603, 
604, 605, 607, 610, 611. 

Mexican border service, 48, 122, 

235- 
Mezieres, 13, 565. 
Mezy, 538. 

Moirey Wood, 566, 568. 
Molleville farm, 352, 553, 557, 

559, 584, 599- 

Moltke, Field Marshal, 469. 

Money Wood, 294, 296, 299. 

Mons, 248. 

Montblainville, 177, 178. 

Montfaucon, 64, 65, 66, 68, 109, 
124, 125, 127, 129, 134, 140, 
141, 143, 155, 160, 162, 164, 
185, 194, 195, 200, 201, 206, 
207, 208, 209, 214, 215, 216, 
217, 218, 220, 221, 267, 268, 
325, 569, 600. 

Montfaucon woods, 126, 161, 
204, 215, 217, 303, 333. 

Montrebeau Wood, 188, 191, 
195, 271, 273. 

Montrefagne (see Hill 24.0). 

Mont Sec, 560. 

Morine Wood, 202, 276, 277, 
294. 

Mort Homme, 70, 71, 72, 124, 
148, 149, 152, 350. 

Morton, Major-General Charles 
G., 35i- 



INDEX 



627 



Mosby, Colonel, 338. 
Moselle river, 578, 589. 
Moussin brook, 329, 330. 
Muir, Major-General Charles 
H., 57. 

Nancy, 505. 

Nantillois, 194, 210, 219, 220, 

221, 328. 
Napoleon, 228, 366, 388, 447, 

469, 478. 
Nauroy, 235, 241. 
Naza Wood, 310, 314. 
Neufchateau, 359, 362. 
Nivelle, General, 355, 356. 

Ogons Wood, 221, 222, 267, 324, 
333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 344. 

Ohio Division {see 37th Divi- 
sion). 

Old Hickory Division {see 30th 
Division) . 

Orion Division {see 27th Divi- 
sion). 

Orleans, 409. 

Ormont Wood, 540, 558, 559, 563, 
564, 568, 584. 

O'Ryan, Major-General John 
F., 223. 

Ostend, 612. 

Ourcq river, 68, 270, 519, 525. 

Pacific Coast Division {see gist 

Division). 
Palestine campaign, 1918, 3. 
Paris, n, 47, 373, 392, 448, 475, 

476, 509, 5*5, 576- 

Parker, Brigadier - General 
Frank, 585. 

Passchendaele {sse Battle, ZQI7). 

Peking, march to, 365. 

Perrieres Hill, 176, 178. 

Pershing, General John J., 3, 
14, 16, 39, 60, 61, 79, 296, 355, 
356, 357, 361, 362, 363 364, 
366, 367, 370, 371, 373, 374, 
375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 
381, 389, 394, 395, 412, 42i, 
434, 435, 436, 446, 454, 462, 



465, 467, 468, 498, 511, 515, 

516, 517, 587, 607. 
Petain, Marshal, 14, 355, 367. 
Petit Wood {see Little Wood). 
Peut de Faux Wood, 331, 344, 

346. 
Philippine rebellion, 437. 
Piave river, 3 
Picardy, 359, 383. 
Plat-Chene ravine, 353. 
Plunkett, Rear-Admiral, 581. 
Port Arthur, 553. 
Potomac river, 349. 
Premont, 246. 
Pultiere Wood, 330, 338, 515, 

527, 530, 53i, 532, 534, 537. 
540. 
Pyrenees Mountains, 614. 

Quennemont farm, 230. 

Rainbow Division {see 42nd 

Division). 
Rappes Wood, 338, 515, 529, 

53o, 53i, 532, 533, 534, 535, 

536, 537, 538, 540, 546, 574- 
Read, Major-General George 

W., 223. 
Red Cross, American, 407, 501, 

503, 507, 508. 
Reine Wood, 558. 
Rheims, 134, 249, 250, 251, 257, 

262. 
Rhine river, 2, 17, 349, 578, 583, 

615, 617. 
Riviera, 601. 
Romagne, 304, 305, 306, 348, 

515, 518, 523, 524, 530, 531. 
Romagne Wood, 299, 300, 306, 

519, 52i. 
Roosevelt, President Theodore, 

376, 420. 
Root, Elihu, Secretary of War, 

422. 
Rossignol Wood, 185. 
Roulers, 612. 
Russo-Japanese War, 63, 422. 

Saint-Dizier, 410. 



628 



INDEX 



Saint-Etienne-a-Arnes, 259, 260, 

262. 
Saint-Gobain, 248. 
Saint-Juvin, 309, 315, 316, 317, 

318, 319, 320, 322, 543, 550, 

552. 
Saint-Mihiel, 1, 9, 10, 13, 25, 26, 

80, 144, 262, 325, 357, 360, 

403, 410, 556, 572, 573, 583, 

610, 615 (and see Battle, 

/p/5). 
Saint-Nazaire, 307, 397, 402, 

404. 
Saint-Quentin, 134, 223, 244 

(and see Battle, 1918). 
Saint-Quentin canal, 223, 228, 

236, 237. 
Salvation Army, 501, 502, 

507- 
Samogneux, 349, 555. 
Sassey, 163. 
Scheldt river, 612. 
Sedan, 10, 13, 542, 565, 589, 

607, 608. 
Seicheprey, battle of, 60, 560. 
Selle river, 246, 247. 
Seminary Ridge, 291. 
Services of Supply (S.O.S.), 

28, 93, 376, 378, 381-412, 435, 

437, 454, 459, 473, 481, 49°, 

505, 614, 617. 
Shiloh, battle of, 83. 
Sims, Vice-Admiral William S., 

376. 
Sivry, 352, 353. 
Smith, Major-General William 

R., 260. 
Soissons, 3, 13, 15, 47, 196, 268, 

270 (and see Battle, 1918 — 

" counter-offensive ") . 
Somme valley, 3, 223, 225, 227, 

247, 248, 617 (and see Battle, 

1916, 1918). 
Somme-Py, 250, 251. 
Somme-Py Wood, 254. 
Sommerance, 307, 590. 
Souilly, 31, 355, 374, 39*. 392i 

515- 
:South Africa (Boer War), 88. 



Southwestern Division (see 36th 

Division) . 
Spanish War, 88, 422, 437, 481. 
Stars and Stripes, newspaper, 

463, 483- 
Stenay, 609. 
Steuben, 417. 
Stones, ravine of, 318. 
Stuart, Jeb, 337. 
Summerall, Major - General 

Charles P., 61, 269, 278, 298, 

300, 355, 365-371, 372, 520, 

521, 583, 587, 594. 

Taille 1'Abbe (wood), 168, 178, 

181, 281, 282, 285, 286, 287, 

291, 310, 314. 
Talma Hill, 544, 546. 
Thayer, Sylvanus, 417. 
Toul, 9, 280, 363, 378, 541, 

560. 
Tours, 378, 391, 392, 393, 394, 

395, 396, 406, 450. 
Traub, Major-General Peter 

E., 60. 
Trones Wood, 570. 
Tuilerie farm, 305. 

Valenciennes, 223, 245 (and see 

Battle, 1918). 
Valoup Wood, 303, 304. 
Varennes, 176, 177, 184, 185, 

186, 187, 282, 293. 
Vauquois, 60, 6i, 66, 185, 198. 
Vaux, 257. 
Vaux, Fort, 355, 569. 
Vauxcastille, 257. 
Vaux de Mille Mais ravine, 

553, 599- 
Verdun, 8, 9, 10, 27, 40, 71, 75, 

351, 355, 374, 449, 553, 554, 
569, 577, 586, 599, 6°i, 6*7 
(and see Battle, 1916). 

Very, 187. 

Very Wood, 195, 199. 

Vesle river, 15, 52, 56, 57, 68, 

.325- 
Vigneulles, 561. 
Ville-aux-Bois farm, 337, 345. 



INDEX 



629 



Villers-devant-Dun, 598. 
Vipere Wood, 252, 253. 
Vdlker line, 207. 
Voormezeele, 224. 
Vosges Mountains, 9, 526, 615. 

Wadelincourt, 607. 

War College, 422. 

Warsaw, 14. 

Waterloo, battle of, 417, 478. 

Wavrille Wood, 568. 

Wellington, 417, 478. 

West Point, 376, 388, 413, 414, 
416-417, 418, 419, 420, 422, 
423. 426, 430, 43 1 . 432, 443, 
445, 454. 463- 

Wilderness campaign, 84. 



Wilson, President Woodrow, 

515, 577- 

Woevre, plain of, 4, 9, 71, 
554. 562, 611. 

Wood, Major-General Leonard, 
59, 61, 421, 571. 

Wright, Major-General Will- 
iam M., 59, 572, 594, 596. 

Yankee Division (see 26th Divi- 
sion). 

Y. M. C. A., 407, 408, 489, 501, 
502-506, 507. 

Ypres, 20, 244, 251, 449, 485, 
495. 577. 586, 6i2, 617 (and 
see Battle, 1914, and Battle, 
1918 — Flanders). 



B«-.7o^ 




"" Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process, 

■* <J_ V ki-...„i:_: i. l/l~ ;. . m /-|„;,J„ 



Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 



i& 6 o " ° 



Q V , i/. Treatment Date: MAY ZU01 

PreservationTechnologies \ 




A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 













^ 











<G V ^> -p . » - 











.<piT- D08BSBR0S. \? C Av>> ~ ^™^ » C vT> 

LIBRARY BINDING <X ^ J j^f 

ST. AUGUSTINE ,^ V . c J«x! % ^ f.° .i'J^ .V 













, MAR 1977 A v *> "'.".•• «6 l 






,<T « 






